How to change Matplotlib color bar size in Python?

Colorbar is a separate axis that provides a current colormap indicating mapping of data-points into colors. In this article, We are going to change Matplotlib color bar size in Python. There are several ways with which you can resize your color-bar or adjust its position. Let’s see it one by one.

Method 1: Resizing color-bar using shrink keyword argument

Using the shrink attribute of colorbar() function we can scale the size of the colorbar. 

Syntax : matplotlib.pyplot.colorbar(mappable=None, shrink=scale)

Basically, we are multiplying by some factor to the original size of the color-bar. In the below example by using 0.5 as a factor, We are having the original color-bar size.

Example 1:  

Python3

# importing library
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

# Some data to show as an image
data = [[1, 2, 3],
        [4, 5, 6]]

# Call imshow() to display 2-D data as an image
img = plt.imshow(data)

# Scaling colorbar by factor 0.5
plt.colorbar(shrink=0.5)
plt.show()

Output: 

Using_shrink_attribute

Example 2: In this example, we are using factor 0.75. Similarly, you can use any factor to change the color-bar size. The default value of the shrink attribute is 1.

Python3

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import matplotlib.image as mpimg
fig, ax = plt.subplots()

# getting rid of axis
plt.axis('off')

# Reading saved image from folder
img = mpimg.imread(r'img.jpg')

# displaying image
plt.imshow(img)

# Scaling by factor 0.75
plt.colorbar(shrink=0.75)
plt.show()

Output: 

Using_shrink_attribute

Method 2: Using AxesDivider class

With this class, you can change the size of the colorbar axes however height will be the same as the current axes. Here we are using axes_divider.make_axes_locatable function which returns the AxisDivider object for our current axes in which our image is shown.

Example:

Python3

# importing libraries
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
from mpl_toolkits.axes_grid1 import make_axes_locatable

fig, ax = plt.subplots()
# Reading image from folder

img = mpimg.imread(r'img.jpg')
image = plt.imshow(img)

# Locating current axes
divider = make_axes_locatable(ax)

# creating new axes on the right
# side of current axes(ax).
# The width of cax will be 5% of ax
# and the padding between cax and ax
# will be fixed at 0.05 inch.
colorbar_axes = divider.append_axes("right",
                                    size="10%",
                                    pad=0.1)
# Using new axes for colorbar
plt.colorbar(image, cax=colorbar_axes)
plt.show()

Output: 

Using_AxisDivider