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How to manually add a legend with a color box on a Matplotlib figure ?

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A legend is basically an area in the plot which describes the elements present in the graph. Matplotlib provides an inbuilt method named legend() for this purpose. The syntax of the method is below :

Example: Adding Simple legend

Python3




# Import libraries
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
  
# Creating plot
plt.plot([1, 2, 3, 4])
  
  
plt.title('simple legend example ')
  
# Creating legend
plt.legend(['simple legend example']) 
  
# Show plot
plt.show()


Output:

Creating legend with color box

To create a legend with a color box, patches are used provided by the matplotlib.patches module. A patch nothing but a 2D artist with face color and edge color. Below is a simple example of this:

Example 1:

Python3




# Import libraries
import matplotlib.patches as mpatches
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
  
# Creating plot
plt.plot([1, 2, 3, 4], color='blue')
  
plt.title('simple legend example ')
  
# Creating legend with color box
blue_patch = mpatches.Patch(color='blue', label='blue legend')
plt.legend(handles=[blue_patch])
  
# Show plot
plt.show()


Output:

Example 2:

Python3




# Import libraries
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import matplotlib.patches as mpatches
import scipy.stats
import numpy as np
  
# Setting limit for x values
x_min = 0.0
x_max = 50.0
  
# Setting figure size
fig = plt.figure(figsize = (16, 9)) 
  
# Creating first dataset
mean = 12.0 
std = 3.0
  
x = np.linspace(x_min, x_max, 100)
y = scipy.stats.norm.pdf(x,mean,std)
  
# Plotting first dataset
plt.plot(x,y, color='red')
plt.fill_between(x, y, color='#CE5D45', alpha=1.0)
  
# Creating second dataset
mean = 18.0 
std = 6.0
  
x = np.linspace(x_min, x_max, 100)
y = scipy.stats.norm.pdf(x,mean,std)
  
# Plotting second dataset
plt.plot(x,y, color='green')
plt.fill_between(x, y, color='#5DC83F', alpha=1.0)
  
# Creating legend with color box
pop_a = mpatches.Patch(color='#5DC83F', label='Population Dataset 1')
pop_b = mpatches.Patch(color='#CE5D45', label='Population Dataset 2')
plt.legend(handles=[pop_a,pop_b])
  
# Adding grid to plot
plt.grid()
  
# Adding X and Y limits
plt.xlim(x_min,x_max)
plt.ylim(0,0.25)
  
# Adding title
plt.title('simple legend example',fontsize=12)
  
# Adding labels
plt.xlabel('')
plt.ylabel('Probability Distribution')
  
# Showing plot
plt.show()


Output:



Last Updated : 23 Dec, 2020
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