[FIXED] Logarithmic color scale in plotly

Issue

I'm trying to visualize the data with some outliers using Plotly and Python3. Outliers cause the color scale legend to look badly: there are only few high data points, but the legend looks bad: space between 2k and 10k is too big.

So the question is, how to change the appearance of 'color legend' on the right (see image below), so it will show the difference between 0 to 2k mostly? Unfortunately, couldn't get an answer from this doc file

Sample code (jupyter notebook):

import numpy as np
from plotly.offline import download_plotlyjs, init_notebook_mode, iplot
from plotly.graph_objs import *
init_notebook_mode()

x = np.random.randn(100,1) + 3
y = np.random.randn(100,1) + 10
x = np.reshape(x, 100)
y = np.reshape(y, 100)

color = np.random.randint(0,1000, [100])
color[[1,3,5]] = color[[1,3,5]] + 10000 # create outliers in color var

trace = Scatter(
    x = x,
    y = y,
    mode = 'markers',
    marker=dict(
        color = color,
        showscale=True,
        colorscale = [[0, 'rgb(166,206,227, 0.5)'],
                      [0.05, 'rgb(31,120,180,0.5)'],
                      [0.1, 'rgb(178,223,138,0.5)'],
                      [0.15, 'rgb(51,160,44,0.5)'],
                      [0.2, 'rgb(251,154,153,0.5)'],
                      [1, 'rgb(227,26,28,0.5)']
                     ]
    )
)

fig = Figure(data=[trace])
iplot(fig)

What i'm looking for:

Solution

You can accomplish what I think you're after by customizing the colorscale, cmin, and cmax properties to have a discrete color change at exactly 2000. Then you can customize colorbar.tickvals to label the boundary as 2000. See https://plot.ly/python/reference/#scatter-marker-colorbar.

import numpy as np
from plotly.offline import download_plotlyjs, init_notebook_mode, iplot
from plotly.graph_objs import *
init_notebook_mode()

x = np.random.randn(100,1) + 3
y = np.random.randn(100,1) + 10
x = np.reshape(x, 100)
y = np.reshape(y, 100)

color = np.random.randint(0,1000, [100])
color[[1,3,5]] = color[[1,3,5]] + 10000 # create outliers in color var

bar_max = 2000
factor = 0.9  # Normalized location where continuous colorscale should end

trace = Scatter(
    x = x,
    y = y,
    mode = 'markers',
    marker=dict(
        color = color,
        showscale=True,
        cmin=0,
        cmax= bar_max/factor,
        colorscale = [[0, 'rgb(166,206,227, 0.5)'],
                      [0.05, 'rgb(31,120,180,0.5)'],
                      [0.2, 'rgb(178,223,138,0.5)'],
                      [0.5, 'rgb(51,160,44,0.5)'],
                      [factor, 'rgb(251,154,153,0.5)'],
                      [factor, 'rgb(227,26,28,0.5)'],
                      [1, 'rgb(227,26,28,0.5)']
                     ],
        colorbar=dict(
            tickvals = [0, 500, 1000, 1500, 2000],
            ticks='outside'
        )
    )
)

fig = Figure(data=[trace])
iplot(fig)

^{New figure result}

Answered By - Jon Mease