SpiffyPlots

A collection of matplotlib style sheets and plotting tools for publication-ready figures.

Requires Python 3.10 or newer and Matplotlib 3.8 or newer.

• Free software: MIT license
• Documentation: https://spiffyplots.readthedocs.io.

Simple style example:

Installation

Install the latest release:

pip install spiffyplots

or install the latest commit directly from GitHub:

pip install git+https://github.com/JRBCH/spiffyplots.git

For local development, install uv and run:

uv sync
uv run ruff check .
uv run pytest

Using the style sheets

The style sheets ship inside the package and register themselves with matplotlib when spiffyplots is imported:

import spiffyplots  # registers the styles and colormaps
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

plt.style.use("spiffy")  # base style
plt.style.use(["spiffy", "tol-muted"])  # base style plus a color scheme

Import spiffyplots before calling plt.style.use. The base style names a colormap that this package registers, and a style sheet naming an unregistered colormap applies silently and then fails at draw time.

Available styles:

The base spiffy style keeps vector text editable. PDF and PostScript embeds TrueType fonts, and SVG retains <text> elements instead of converting glyphs to paths.

If for some reason you want to restore Matplotlib's default outlined SVG behavior, set plt.rcParams["svg.fonttype"] = "path".

Colors and colormaps

Style sheets only set the default cycle. For the colors themselves, use spiffyplots.colors for discrete colors and spiffyplots.cmap for colormaps.

import spiffyplots as spiffy

scheme = spiffy.colors.tol_vibrant
color_exc = scheme.red  # '#CC3311'
color_inh = scheme.blue  # '#0077BB'

spiffy.colors.from_cmap(spiffy.cmap.sequential, 6)  # 6 equally spaced colors
spiffy.colors.shades(color_exc, 5)  # 5 shades of one base color

Schemes: tol_bright, tol_high_contrast, tol_vibrant, tol_muted, tol_medium_contrast, tol_light, tol_pale, tol_dark and okabe_ito. Each is a tuple you can index, slice and iterate, whose colors are also reachable by name. Each runs in its author's recommended order, then black, then grey.

cmap = spiffy.cmap.sequential  # Paul Tol's iridescent
cmap = spiffy.cmap.diverging  # Paul Tol's nightfall
cmap = spiffy.cmap.iridescent_r  # any of Tol's, by short name
cmap = spiffy.cmap.viridis  # falls through to matplotlib
cmap = spiffy.cmap.batlow  # falls through to cmcrameri
cmap = spiffy.cmap.kbc  # falls through to colorcet

cmap = spiffy.cmap.from_base(color_exc)  # white -> color -> darker
cmap = spiffy.cmap.from_colors(spiffy.colors.tol_muted)
cmap = spiffy.cmap.discrete_rainbow(8)

Perceptually uniform colormaps

cmcrameri and colorcet do that very well, and spiffy.cmap reaches their colormaps too once either is installed. To install them together with spiffyplots:

pip install "spiffyplots[colormaps]"

import spiffyplots as spiffy

cmap = spiffy.cmap.batlow  # cmcrameri, registered as `cmc.batlow`
cmap = spiffy.cmap.kbc  # colorcet, registered as `cet_kbc`

• Matplotlib style sheets

  • General style sheets for quick and beautiful out-of-the-box plotting
  • Color style sheets for Paul Tol's color schemes and Okabe-Ito, all color-blind safe

• Colors

  • Easy access to colors and colormaps
  • Ramps and shades derived from one base color, e.g. for heatmaps

• Multi-panel figures

  • Easy and flexible wrapper of matplotlib's GridSpec
  • Automatic labelling of sub-panels
  • Support for custom panel arrangements and labels
  • Figure sizes in inches, centimetres or millimetres

Credits

• This package was created with Cookiecutter and the audreyr/cookiecutter-pypackage project template.

• Most color schemes are Paul Tol's, redistributed under the 3-clause BSD license