CodexBloom - Programming Q&A Platform

Customizing `colorbar` ticks in Matplotlib for better readability

๐Ÿ‘€ Views: 471 ๐Ÿ’ฌ Answers: 1 ๐Ÿ“… Created: 2025-07-02
matplotlib colorbar data-visualization Python

After trying multiple solutions online, I still can't figure this out. I'm sure I'm missing something obvious here, but I'm working on a personal project and I tried several approaches but none seem to work. I'm working on a project and hit a roadblock. I'm trying to customize the ticks on a colorbar in Matplotlib to improve readability for my heatmap. I have a 10x10 grid of data, and I've set up a basic heatmap using the `imshow` function. However, the default ticks on the colorbar are too closely spaced, making it hard to interpret. I've attempted to adjust them using `set_ticks`, but I'm running into issues where the custom ticks don't appear as expected. Hereโ€™s the code I've written so far: ```python import numpy as np import matplotlib.pyplot as plt # Generate random data np.random.seed(0) data = np.random.rand(10, 10) # Create a heatmap fig, ax = plt.subplots() heatmap = ax.imshow(data, cmap='viridis') # Add colorbar cbar = plt.colorbar(heatmap) # Attempting to set custom ticks cbar.set_ticks([0, 0.25, 0.5, 0.75, 1]) # Setting custom tick labels cbar.set_ticklabels(['Low', 'Medium-Low', 'Medium', 'Medium-High', 'High']) plt.show() ``` When I run this code, I see the custom tick labels, but they don't align with the correct positions on the colorbar. The labels seem to be misaligned and are not corresponding to the right values. Additionally, I tried using `cbar.ax.yaxis.set_ticks_position('left')` to move the ticks, but it didnโ€™t help. Iโ€™m using Matplotlib version 3.4.3. Any guidance on how to properly set and align the colorbar ticks and their corresponding labels would be greatly appreciated! For context: I'm using Python on Ubuntu. This is part of a larger web app I'm building. What's the best practice here? What am I doing wrong? The stack includes Python and several other technologies. Am I approaching this the right way? Thanks, I really appreciate it!