My matplotlib.pyplot legend is being cut off

Question

I'm attempting to create a plot with a legend to the side of it using matplotlib. I can see that the plot is being created, but the image bounds do not allow the entire legend to be displayed.

lines = [] ax = plt.subplot(111) for filename in args:     lines.append(plt.plot(y_axis, x_axis, colors[colorcycle], linestyle='steps-pre', label=filename)) ax.legend(bbox_to_anchor=(1.05, 1), loc=2, borderaxespad=0.) 

This produces:

Answer 1

Eventhough that it is late, I want to refer to a nice recently introduced alternative:

New matplotlib feature: The tight bounding box

If you are interested in the output file of plt.savefig: in this case the flag bbox_inches='tight' is your friend!

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt  fig = plt.figure(1) plt.plot([1, 2, 3], [1, 0, 1], label='A') plt.plot([1, 2, 3], [1, 2, 2], label='B') plt.legend(loc='center left', bbox_to_anchor=(1, 0))  fig.savefig('samplefigure', bbox_inches='tight') 

I want to refer also to a more detailed answer: Moving matplotlib legend outside of the axis makes it cutoff by the figure box

Advantages

• There is no need to adjust the actual data/picture.
• It is compatible with plt.subplots as-well where as the others are not!
• It applies at least to the mostly used output files, e.g. png, pdf.