Plot Ellipse with matplotlib.pyplot (Python)

python matplotlib ellipse
hjweide picture hjweide · Jun 8, 2012 · Viewed 60.2k times · Source

Sorry if this is a stupid question, but is there an easy way to plot an ellipse with matplotlib.pyplot in Python? I was hoping there would be something similar to matplotlib.pyplot.arrow, but I can't find anything.

Is the only way to do it using matplotlib.patches with draw_artist or something similar? I would hope that there is a simpler method, but the documentation doesn't offer much help.

Answer

max29 picture max29 · Aug 13, 2013

The matplotlib ellipse demo is nice. But I could not implement it in my code without a for loop. I was getting an axes figure error. Here is what I did instead, where of course the xy center are my own coordinates with respective width and height based on the image over which I plotted the ellipse.

from matplotlib.patches import Ellipse

plt.figure()
ax = plt.gca()

ellipse = Ellipse(xy=(157.18, 68.4705), width=0.036, height=0.012, 
                        edgecolor='r', fc='None', lw=2)
ax.add_patch(ellipse)

This code is based partially on the very first code box on this page. See Chris's response above for a link to matplotlib.patches.Ellipse.

Related questions

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

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

Read More
Save plot to image file instead of displaying it using Matplotlib

I am writing a quick-and-dirty script to generate plots on the fly. I am using the code below (from Matplotlib documentation) as a starting point: from pylab import figure, axes, pie, title, show # Make a square figure and axes figure(1, …

Read More
How do I set the figure title and axes labels font size in Matplotlib?

I am creating a figure in Matplotlib like this: from matplotlib import pyplot as plt fig = plt.figure() plt.plot(data) fig.suptitle('test title') plt.xlabel('xlabel') plt.ylabel('ylabel') fig.savefig('test.jpg') I want to specify font …

Read More