Advanced Styling & Publication-Ready Plots

Using Style Sheets

Matplotlib comes with predefined styles:

plt.style.use('seaborn-v0_8-darkgrid')  # Modern Seaborn style
plt.style.use('ggplot')                  # R ggplot2 style

Available styles: `['seaborn-v0_8', 'default', 'dark_background', 'bmh', 'fivethirtyeight', 'ggplot', ...]

Figure and Axes Properties

fig, ax = plt.subplots(figsize=(12, 7))

# DPI (dots per inch) — higher = sharper
fig.savefig('plot.png', dpi=300)

# Spine removal (for cleaner look)
ax.spines['top'].set_visible(False)
ax.spines['right'].set_visible(False)

# Custom grid
ax.grid(True, alpha=0.3, linestyle='--', linewidth=0.5)

Advanced Legend Options

ax.legend(loc='best', framealpha=0.9, fontsize=11,
          title='Variables', title_fontsize=12,
          ncol=2)  # 2 columns

Annotations

Add text, arrows, and highlights:

ax.annotate('Important Point!',
            xy=(x_val, y_val),       # point to mark
            xytext=(x_text, y_text), # where to put text
            arrowprops=dict(arrowstyle='->', color='red'),
            fontsize=11, ha='left')

Font Management

import matplotlib.font_manager as fm

# Set global font
plt.rcParams['font.family'] = 'sans-serif'
plt.rcParams['font.size'] = 11
plt.rcParams['axes.titlesize'] = 14

Publication tip: Save as PDF or EPS for papers, PNG/JPEG for web. Use 300 DPI for printing.