Can I give a border (outline) to a line in matplotlib plot function?

Question

I try:

points = [...] axe.plot([i[0] for i in points], [i[1] for i in points], linestyle='-', linewidth=10,  color='black', markeredgewidth=2, markeredgecolor='green') 

But I just get a black contour. How can I achieve something like on the following picture?

Answer 1

If you plot a line twice it won't show up in the legend. It's indeed better to use patheffects. Here are two simple examples:

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt import numpy as np import matplotlib.patheffects as pe  # setup data x = np.arange(0.0, 1.0, 0.01) y = np.sin(2*2*np.pi*t)  # create line plot including an outline (stroke) using path_effects plt.plot(x, y, color='k', lw=2, path_effects=[pe.Stroke(linewidth=5, foreground='g'), pe.Normal()]) # custom plot settings plt.grid(True) plt.ylim((-2, 2)) plt.legend(['sine']) plt.show() 

Or if you want to add a line shadow

# create line plot including an simple line shadow using path_effects plt.plot(x, y, color='k', lw=2, path_effects=[pe.SimpleLineShadow(shadow_color='g'), pe.Normal()]) # custom plot settings plt.grid(True) plt.ylim((-2, 2)) plt.legend(['sine']) plt.show() 

Answer 2

Just plot the line twice with different thicknesses:

axe.plot([i[0] for i in points], [i[1] for i in points], linestyle='-', linewidth=10,  color='green') axe.plot([i[0] for i in points], [i[1] for i in points], linestyle='-', linewidth=5,  color='black')