matplotlib: change the current axis instance (i.e., gca())

Question

I use a trick to draw a colorbar whose height matches the master axes. The code is like

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt from mpl_toolkits.axes_grid1 import make_axes_locatable import numpy as np  ax = plt.subplot(111) im = ax.imshow(np.arange(100).reshape((10,10)))  # create an axes on the right side of ax. The width of cax will be 5% # of ax and the padding between cax and ax will be fixed at 0.05 inch. divider = make_axes_locatable(ax) cax = divider.append_axes("right", size="5%", pad=0.05)  plt.colorbar(im, cax=cax) 

This trick works good. However, since a new axis is appended, the current instance of the figure becomes cax - the appended axis. As a result, if one performs operations like

plt.text(0,0,'whatever') 

the text will be drawn on cax instead of ax - the axis to which im belongs.

Meanwhile, gcf().axes shows both axes.

My question is: How to make the current axis instance (returned by gca()) the original axis to which im belongs.

Answer 1

Use plt.sca(ax) to set the current axes, where ax is the Axes object you'd like to become active.