Eliminating Axes, Legends, and White Padding in Matplotlib

To create a clean image without distracting elements, it's crucial to remove axes, labels, and white padding from Matplotlib plots. While setting the axis visibility to False resolves the axis issue, it leaves behind a white border and padding.

Addressing White Padding

To eliminate the white padding surrounding the image, you can employ the bbox_inches parameter when saving the image. Setting it to 'tight' will crop the figure boundaries to the extent of the data, reducing white space significantly.

Newer Matplotlib Versions

Note that for newer Matplotlib versions, you may need to use bbox_inches=0 instead of 'tight' to achieve the same result. This ensures that the image is saved with no margins or padding whatsoever.

Example Code

Here's an updated code snippet that implements the above fixes:

from numpy import random
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

data = random.random((5, 5))
img = plt.imshow(data, interpolation='nearest')
img.set_cmap('hot')
plt.axis('off')
plt.savefig("test.png", bbox_inches=0)

Output

The resulting image will be free of axes, labels, white padding, and frame, providing a clean and focused representation of your data.