MATLAB: Change underlying colormap for ‘plot’, just like in ‘area’

colorcolormap

I'm trying to have a figure with various subplots, showing portfolio composition with area plots and portfolio returns with a normal (line) plots. For the area plot, Matlab is using the default colormap Jet, and I can change this by using

      colormap(summer)

for example. Now it makes sense to plot the time series of returns of each assets in the same color as it has in the area plot, however, Matlab always uses the 'line' colormap, which has the problem that it repeats itself after the seventh color, making curves 8 and 9 blue and green like curves 1 and 2. typing colormap(summer), as above, does affect the 'area' command, but not the 'plot' command. I'm working with many subplots, hence a solution that does not have to be applied to every single plot would be best.

Best Answer

Here's how:

http://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/creating_plots/defining-the-color-of-lines-for-plotting.html

I also sometimes use this utility from the File Exchange: http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/29702-generate-maximally-perceptually-distinct-colors

Related Solutions

MATLAB: Where in the axes properties (or elsewhere) is the “pointer” on the next color of ColorOrder

Maybe not exactly what you wanted but a workaround:

fH = figure;
aH = axes;
lH = plot(rand(10,1),'r');
your_colors = get(fH,'DefaultAxesColorOrder');
colorIdx = find(ismember(your_colors,get(lH,'Color'),'rows'));
nextColorIdx = mod(colorIdx + 1, size(your_colors,1));
nextColor = your_colors(nextColorIdx,:);

I think creating your own custom color order and cycling through it would be better. The snippet I gave you will not work if the color of the line you plot is not in the default colors.

MATLAB: Why ‘colormap’ did not change the color of the plots

If you want to change the color of the lines based on a colormap, you can apply those colors to the "ColorOrder" property of the axes.

figure
h = plot(rand(5));
% Create a colormap based on the number of lines in your plot
cmap = hot(numel(h));   %you can use any colormap here
% Apply the colors to the lines
set(gca, 'ColorOrder', cmap)

Alternatively, you can apply the colors to the color handles of line objects,

set(h,{'Color'}, mat2cell(cmap,ones(numel(h),1),3))

Note that if your really want to use "hot", you'll end up with yellow and white lines wich are difficult or impossible to see against the default white axis. In that case you can change the axis colors to some other dark color.

set(gca, 'Color', [.2 .2 .2])

Best Answer

Related Solutions

MATLAB: Where in the axes properties (or elsewhere) is the “pointer” on the next color of ColorOrder

MATLAB: Why ‘colormap’ did not change the color of the plots

Related Question