Remove lines from color and fill legends

drmariod picture drmariod · Apr 29, 2015 · Viewed 8.2k times · Source

I have a plot with three different legends: one for linetype, one for color, and one for fill. In the color and fill legends there are also some lines which I wish to remove, but how?

Here is some example code:

# some data
hline_df <- data.frame(name = c('a', 'b'), y = c(1, 2))
df <- data.frame(x = c(1, 2), y = c(0.5, 1.5), con = c('a', 'b'), col = c('d', 'e'))

# the plot
ggplot(df, aes(x, y, fill = con)) +
  geom_bar(stat = 'identity') + 
  geom_point(aes(color = col)) +
  geom_hline(data = hline_df, aes(yintercept = y, linetype = name),
             color = 'red', show_guide = TRUE)

enter image description here

I get the "name" guide for both red lines, that is fine.
The "col" guide has red lines crossing the dots, I want to remove them!
The "con" guide also has red lines which should be removed.

I could modify parts of the legend with

guides(fill = guide_legend(override.aes = list(colour = NULL)),
       color = guide_legend(override.aes = list(colour = NULL)))

This removes the colour, but the lines are still there.

Thanks in advance!

Answer

Henrik picture Henrik · Apr 29, 2015

You may set linetype = 0 or "blank" (on different linetypes here) for the filland color guides in your override.aes call.

Also note that I moved the fill aes from the 'top level' in ggplot to geom_bar.

ggplot(df, aes(x, y)) +
  geom_bar(aes(fill = con), stat = 'identity') + 
  geom_point(aes(color = col)) +
  geom_hline(data = hline_df, aes(yintercept = y, linetype = name), color = 'red', show_guide = TRUE) +
  guides(fill = guide_legend(override.aes = list(linetype = 0)),
         color = guide_legend(override.aes = list(linetype = 0)))

enter image description here