How do you change the size of figures drawn with matplotlib?

In this short tutorial let’s explore some examples about using figure and figure size in Python when working with the matplotlib library.

You might want to change the size of a figure after it is created or maybe even before creating it, so let’s check some options so you can start working with the plot size.

Example 1:

figure tells you the call signature:

from matplotlib.pyplot import figure
figure(num=None, figsize=(8, 6), dpi=80, facecolor='w', edgecolor='k')

figure(figsize=(1,1)) would create an inch-by-inch image, which would be 80-by-80 pixels unless you also give a different dpi argument.

Example 2:

If you’ve already got the figure created you can quickly do this:

fig = matplotlib.pyplot.gcf()
fig.set_size_inches(18.5, 10.5)
fig.savefig('test2png.png', dpi=100)

To propagate the size change to an existing gui window add forward=True

fig.set_size_inches(18.5, 10.5, forward=True)

If you want to continue learning about matplotlib, take a look at the below resources:

Matplotlib Tutorial

Applied Data Science with Python Specialization

References:

• https://stackoverflow.com/questions/332289/how-do-you-change-the-size-of-figures-drawn-with-matplotlib

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