[FIXED] use matplotlib color map for color cycle

Issue

If I create colors by e.g:

import numpy as np
from matplotlib import pyplot as plt

n = 6
color = plt.cm.coolwarm(np.linspace(0.1,0.9,n))
color

color is a numpy array:

array([[ 0.34832334,  0.46571115,  0.88834616,  1.        ],
       [ 0.56518158,  0.69943844,  0.99663507,  1.        ],
       [ 0.77737753,  0.84092121,  0.9461493 ,  1.        ],
       [ 0.93577377,  0.8122367 ,  0.74715647,  1.        ],
       [ 0.96049006,  0.61627642,  0.4954666 ,  1.        ],
       [ 0.83936494,  0.32185622,  0.26492398,  1.        ]])

However, If I plug in the RGB values (without the alpha value 1) as tuples in my .mplstyle file (map(tuple,color[:,0:-1])), I get an error similar to this one:

in file "/home/moritz/.config/matplotlib/stylelib/ggplot.mplstyle"
    Key axes.color_cycle: [(0.34832334141176474 does not look like a color arg
  (val, error_details, msg))

Any ideas why?

Solution

Edit 04/2021: As of matplotlib 2.2.0, the key axes.color_cycle has been deprecated (source: API changes). The new method is to use set_prop_cycle (source: matplotlib.axes.Axes.set_prop_cycle API)

---

The details are in the matplotlibrc itself, actually: it needs a string rep (hex or letter or word, not tuple).

import numpy as np
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import matplotlib as mpl

fig, ax1 = plt.subplots(1,1)

ys = np.random.random((5, 6))
ax1.plot(range(5), ys)
ax1.set_title('Default color cycle')
plt.show()

# From the sample matplotlibrc:
#axes.color_cycle    : b, g, r, c, m, y, k  # color cycle for plot lines
                                            # as list of string colorspecs:
                                            # single letter, long name, or
                                            # web-style hex

# setting color cycle after calling plt.subplots doesn't "take"
# try some hex values as **string** colorspecs
mpl.rcParams['axes.color_cycle'] = ['#129845','#271254', '#FA4411', '#098765', '#000009']

fig, ax2 = plt.subplots(1,1)
ax2.plot(range(5), ys)
ax2.set_title('New color cycle')


n = 6
color = plt.cm.coolwarm(np.linspace(0.1,0.9,n)) # This returns RGBA; convert:
hexcolor = map(lambda rgb:'#%02x%02x%02x' % (rgb[0]*255,rgb[1]*255,rgb[2]*255),
               tuple(color[:,0:-1]))

mpl.rcParams['axes.color_cycle'] = hexcolor

fig, ax3 = plt.subplots(1,1)
ax3.plot(range(5), ys)
ax3.set_title('Color cycle from colormap')

plt.show()

Answered By - cphlewis