Second y-axis label getting cut off

Question

I’m trying to plot two sets of data in a bar graph with matplotlib, so I’m using two axes with the twinx() method. However, the second y-axis label gets cut off. I’ve tried a few different methods with no success (tight_layout(), setting the major_pads in rcParams, etc…). I feel like the solution is simple, but I haven’t come across it yet.

Here’s a MWE:

#!/usr/bin/env python
import numpy as np
import matplotlib
matplotlib.use('Agg')
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

matplotlib.rcParams.update({'font.size': 21})
ax = plt.gca()
plt.ylabel('Data1') #Left side
ax2 = ax.twinx()
for i in range(10):
  if(i%2==0):
    ax.bar(i,np.random.randint(10))
  else:
    ax2.bar(i,np.random.randint(1000),color='k')


plt.ylabel('Data2') #Right

side
plt.savefig(“test.png”)

Sample graph with Data2 cut off

Asked By: zje

||

Source

Answer 1

I just figured it out: the trick is to use bbox_inches='tight' in savefig.

E.G. plt.savefig("test.png",bbox_inches='tight')

fixed now

Answered By: zje

Answer 2

I encountered the same issue which plt.tight_layout() did not automatically solve.
Instead, I used the labelpad argument in ylabel/set_ylabel as such:

ax.set_ylabel('label here', rotation=270, color='k', labelpad=15)

I guess this was not implemented when you asked this question, but as it’s the top result on google, hopefully it can help users of the current matplotlib version.

Answered By: Elliot

Second y-axis label getting cut off

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