Matplotlib: Getting subplots to fill figure

Question

I would please like suggestions for how to override the default matplotlib behaviour when plotting images as subplots, whereby the subplot sizes don\'t seem to match the fig

Answer 1

First, you're using calls to plt when you have Axes objects as your disposal. That road leads to pain. Second, imshow sets the aspect ratio of the axes scales to 1. That's why the axes are so narrow. Knowing all that, your example becomes:

import numpy as np
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

data = np.random.rand(10,4)

#creating a wide figure with 2 subplots in 1 row
fig, axes = plt.subplots(1, 2, figsize=(9,3))  

for ax in axes.flatten():  # flatten in case you have a second row at some point
    img = ax.imshow(data, interpolation='nearest')
    ax.set_aspect('auto')

plt.colorbar(img)

On my system, that looks like this: