Creating an Infographic In Python

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+3 Q:

Creating an Infographic In Python

I want to create a simple infographic in python. Matplotlib seems to have a lot of features but nothing that covers off my simple heatmap grid example.

The infographic is a simple 5 x 5 grid with numbers inside ranging from 0 to 1. The grid squares would then be coloured in 0=white 1=blue 0.5 being a pale blue.

Matplotlib could probably be used but I couldn't find or combine any examples that offered insight into generating this.

Any insight, example code or library direction would really help

Regards Matt

+1 A:

Jonathan Feinberg 2009-11-02 15:09:39

This is great however I'm looking to display the numbers in the grid. The coloring is secondary.

Matt Alcock 2009-11-02 16:16:48

@Matt: So ... Read the above code, check out the Cairo API, and adjust it to render the text rather than a filled rectangle. How hard could that be?

unwind 2009-11-02 16:30:32

I concur with unwind, the best way is to try and make sure you'd feel at ease with whatever you are going to use for your project!

RedGlyph 2009-11-02 16:39:18

Good call, sounds like cario has the power I need! I'll start training up!

Matt Alcock 2009-11-02 17:38:59

+3 A:

RedGlyph 2009-11-02 15:19:15

Noice. (15 chars! 15 chars!)

Jonathan Feinberg 2009-11-02 15:51:15

This is great however I'm looking to display the numbers in the grid. The coloring is secondary. Also the coloring here is grandual rather than fixed for each gird square

Matt Alcock 2009-11-02 16:15:57

Here you are, of course you have some flexibility in the way the grid is displayed, the format of the numbers, and so on. It would just be too long to explain here, there's a little show-off on their website: http://matplotlib.sourceforge.net/gallery.html

RedGlyph 2009-11-02 16:32:49

One more comment, Jonathan's suggestion of using PyCairo could be more appropriate if you need to process images (great library by the way!). Matplotlib is more math-oriented as you might have guessed ;-) It also needs some getting used to, using IPython is a good way to try it out in a console - though not mandatory: http://ipython.scipy.org/moin/FrontPage

RedGlyph 2009-11-02 16:37:26

Thanks Jonathan/Red. I'm torn between each I think I'll use the matplotlib method initally (i have that installed) and move to cario if I need to start adding in extra details (like annotations ets). Thanks to all!

Matt Alcock 2009-11-02 17:48:15

I used this setting the interpolation to 'nearest' to ensure I got a heatmap feel rather than a granual effect. imshow(a, cmap=myblue, interpolation='nearest')Thanks again all!

Matt Alcock 2009-11-03 16:30:09

+2 A:

dangph 2009-11-02 16:59:26

this madness... madness?? this is PYTHOOOON!!! XD

fortran 2009-11-02 17:05:16

This is a hack altough it generates exactly what I was after! I don't know what my distribution mech will ultimatly be so tieing this to html doesn't really help. Thanks all the same dangph

Matt Alcock 2009-11-02 17:46:01

Nice! I'll point out that the Cairo library I mention in my answer has PDF and SVG "backends", so that the same code can be used to generate these different formats. But I like the didactic simplicity of your answer. +1

Jonathan Feinberg 2009-11-02 18:52:42

ansaurus

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Creating an Infographic In Python

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