Plotting infrared spectra and hyperspectra can be fun, but frustrating! This tutorial is a starting place to make the your plots and figures look the way you want without leaving Quasar/Orange.

There are many resources that go further than this tutorial. Check out: https://matplotlib.org/ and https://seaborn.pydata.org/

In Quasar, you can use the "python script" widget to format plots using matplotlib.

This workflow shows the process starting with data from quasar datasets. The same sequence could be used by selecting spectra from any data table, spectra plots or hyperspectra. Attach the python script widget to the output of your selected data, and format your plots from the script window.

Matplotlib tutorial

Below are a series of figures, click on the link to get the .py file to generate the plot in quasar.

one curve, one plot:

One plot, three curves, legend; .py file

Two plots, three curves; .py file

fig, (ax, ax2) = plt.subplots(1,2) OR fig, (ax, ax2) = plt.subplots(2,1)

Three plots, three curves; .py file

Add arrow; .py file

To add an arrow, format your plot as above and then add the line:

ax.annotate('key peak', xy=(1600,0.8), xytext=(1400,0.7), arrowprops=dict(facecolor='black', width=0.4, headwidth=6, shrink=0.05),)

Format the annotation

• you can add text;
• xy indicate the location of the arrow tip - using the plot's co-ordinates;
• xytext indicated the location of the text;
• choose the properties of the arrow (facecolour; width=line thickness; headwidth = size of head; shrink move the tip and base some percent away from the annotated point and text

More arrow examples can be found at https://matplotlib.org/tutorials/text/annotations.html

Add Text

To add text to any location on your plot, include the line

ax.text(1600,0.8, r'this is a super neat plot')

Add text using the xy coordinates of the plot

The r preceding the text string is important -- it signifies that the string is a raw string and not to treat backslashes as python escapes.

x-coord = 1600

y-coord = 0.8

text string = r'the text you want on the graph'

Use latex to format your text and incorporate the output directly into your figure

ax.text(1250, .45, r'$\mu=100,\ \sigma=15$')

Want more control?

Layouts

Adjust the layout of your figure using plt.tight_layout()

https://matplotlib.org/tutorials/intermediate/tight_layout_guide.html

Major and minor ticks

https://matplotlib.org/gallery/ticks_and_spines/major_minor_demo.html