.. _colors:

*****************
Specifying Colors
*****************

In almost all places in matplotlib where a color can be specified by the user
it can be provided as:

* an RGB or RGBA tuple of float values in ``[0, 1]``
  (e.g., ``(0.1, 0.2, 0.5)`` or  ``(0.1, 0.2, 0.5, 0.3)``)
* a hex RGB or RGBA string (e.g., ``'#0F0F0F'`` or ``'#0F0F0F0F'``)
* a string representation of a float value in ``[0, 1]``
  inclusive for gray level (e.g., ``'0.5'``)
* one of ``{'b', 'g', 'r', 'c', 'm', 'y', 'k', 'w'}``
* a X11/CSS4 color name
* a name from the `xkcd color survey <https://xkcd.com/color/rgb/>`__
  prefixed with ``'xkcd:'`` (e.g., ``'xkcd:sky blue'``)
* one of ``{'C0', 'C1', 'C2', 'C3', 'C4', 'C5', 'C6', 'C7', 'C8', 'C9'}``

All string specifications of color are case-insensitive.


``'CN'`` color selection
------------------------

Color can be specified by a string matching the regex ``C[0-9]``.
This can be passed any place that a color is currently accepted and
can be used as a 'single character color' in format-string to
`matplotlib.Axes.plot`.

The single digit is the index into the default property cycle
(``matplotlib.rcParams['axes.prop_cycle']``).  If the property cycle does not
include ``'color'`` then black is returned.  The color is evaluated when the
artist is created.  For example,

.. plot::
   :include-source: True

   import numpy as np
   import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
   import matplotlib as mpl
   th = np.linspace(0, 2*np.pi, 128)

   def demo(sty):
       mpl.style.use(sty)
       fig, ax = plt.subplots(figsize=(3, 3))

       ax.set_title('style: {!r}'.format(sty), color='C0')

       ax.plot(th, np.cos(th), 'C1', label='C1')
       ax.plot(th, np.sin(th), 'C2', label='C2')
       ax.legend()

   demo('default')
   demo('seaborn')

will use the first color for the title and then plot using the second
and third colors of each style's ``mpl.rcParams['axes.prop_cycle']``.


xkcd v X11/CSS4
---------------

The xkcd colors are derived from a user survey conducted by the
webcomic xkcd.  `Details of the survey are available on the xkcd blog
<https://blog.xkcd.com/2010/05/03/color-survey-results/>`__.

Out of 148 colors in the CSS color list, there are 95 name collisions
between the X11/CSS4 names and the xkcd names, all but 3 of which have
different hex values.  For example ``'blue'`` maps to ``'#0000FF'``
where as ``'xkcd:blue'`` maps to ``'#0343DF'``.  Due to these name
collisions all of the xkcd colors have ``'xkcd:'`` prefixed.  As noted in
the blog post, while it might be interesting to re-define the X11/CSS4 names
based on such a survey, we do not do so unilaterally.

The name collisions are shown in the table below; the color names
where the hex values agree are shown in bold.


.. plot::

   import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
   import matplotlib._color_data as mcd
   import matplotlib.patches as mpatch

   overlap = {name for name in mcd.CSS4_COLORS
              if "xkcd:" + name in mcd.XKCD_COLORS}

   fig = plt.figure(figsize=[4.8, 16])
   ax = fig.add_axes([0, 0, 1, 1])

   for j, n in enumerate(sorted(overlap, reverse=True)):
       weight = None
       cn = mcd.CSS4_COLORS[n]
       xkcd = mcd.XKCD_COLORS["xkcd:" + n].upper()
       if cn == xkcd:
           weight = 'bold'

       r1 = mpatch.Rectangle((0, j), 1, 1, color=cn)
       r2 = mpatch.Rectangle((1, j), 1, 1, color=xkcd)
       txt = ax.text(2, j+.5, '  ' + n, va='center', fontsize=10,
                     weight=weight)
       ax.add_patch(r1)
       ax.add_patch(r2)
       ax.axhline(j, color='k')

   ax.text(.5, j + 1.5, 'X11', ha='center', va='center')
   ax.text(1.5, j + 1.5, 'xkcd', ha='center', va='center')
   ax.set_xlim(0, 3)
   ax.set_ylim(0, j + 2)
   ax.axis('off')