Introduction to Matplotlib Despine

Matplotlib is a powerful data visualization library for Python. While it offers a vast variety of customization options, many users struggle with removing the default borders and spines of plots. This is where the despine function of the seaborn library comes in handy.

What is despine?

Despine is a function of the seaborn library, which is built on top of Matplotlib. It allows users to remove the top and right spines of a plot, as well as adjust their offset from the data. It can also remove the top and right ticks and labels.

How to Use despine

To use despine, you must first import seaborn, then call the despine function within your Matplotlib code. Here is an example:

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import seaborn as sns

fig, ax = plt.subplots()

sns.set_style('white')    # Set seaborn style to white
ax.plot([1, 2, 3, 4], [1, 4, 2, 3])

sns.despine()            # Remove top and right spines

plt.show()

In this example, we first import matplotlib.pyplot as plt and seaborn as sns. We then create a figure and axis object with plt.subplots(). We set the seaborn style to white, plot some data on the axis object, and finally remove the top and right spines with sns.despine().

Customizing despine

Despine is highly customizable. You can pass keyword arguments to adjust the offset of the spines from the data, the axes to despine, and whether to remove the left and/or bottom spines, ticks, and labels. Here is an example:

sns.set_style('ticks')   # Set seaborn style to ticks
sns.despine(offset=10, trim=True, left=True, ax=ax)

plt.show()

In this example, we first set the seaborn style to ticks, rather than white. We then call sns.despine() again, but this time with different arguments. We set the offset of the spines from the data to 10 points, which makes them slightly further from the plot. We also set trim to True, which limits the spines to the range of the data. Finally, we remove the left spine with left=True.

Conclusion

Despine is a powerful function of the seaborn library that makes it easy to remove the top and right spines, ticks, and labels of your Matplotlib plots. By customizing its arguments, you can make your plots look exactly how you want them to.