Customizing contour plots part 2

November 12, 2017 9 Comments

A few weeks ago a user posted a question on Matlab’s Answers forum, asking whether it is possible to display contour labels in the same color as their corresponding contour lines. In today’s post I’ll provide some insight that may assist users with similar customizations in other plot types.
Matlab does not provide, for reasons that escape my limited understanding, documented access to the contour plot’s component primitives, namely its contour lines, labels and patch faces. Luckily however, these handles are accessible (in HG2, i.e. R2014b onward) via undocumented hidden properties aptly named EdgePrims, TextPrims and FacePrims, as I explained in a previous post about contour plots customization, two years ago.
Let’s start with a simple contour plot of the peaks function:

[X,Y,Z] = peaks;
[C,hContour] = contour(X,Y,Z, 'ShowText','on', 'LevelStep',1);

The result is the screenshot on the left:

In order to update the label colors (to get the screenshot on the right), we create a short updateContours function that updates the TextPrims color to their corresponding EdgePrims color:

The updateContours() function

function updateContours(hContour)
    % Update the text label colors
    drawnow  % very important!
    levels = hContour.LevelList;
    labels = hContour.TextPrims;  % undocumented/unsupported
    lines  = hContour.EdgePrims;  % undocumented/unsupported
    for idx = 1 : numel(labels)
        labelValue = str2double(labels(idx).String);
        lineIdx = find(abs(levels-labelValue)<10*eps, 1);  % avoid FP errors using eps
        labels(idx).ColorData = lines(lineIdx).ColorData;  % update the label color
        %labels(idx).Font.Size = 8;                        % update the label font size
    end
    drawnow  % optional
end

Note that in this function we don’t directly equate the numeric label values to the contour levels’ values: this would work well for integer values but would fail with floating-point ones. Instead I used a very small 10*eps tolerance in the numeric comparison.
Also note that I was careful to call drawnow at the top of the update function, in order to ensure that EdgePrims and TextPrims are updated when the function is called (this might not be the case before the call to drawnow). The final drawnow at the end of the function is optional: it is meant to reduce the flicker caused by the changing label colors, but it can be removed to improve the rendering performance in case of rapidly-changing contour plots.
Finally, note that I added a commented line that shows we can modify other label properties (in this case, the font size from 10 to 8). Feel free to experiment with other label properties.

Putting it all together

The final stage is to call our new updateContours function directly, immediately after creating the contour plot. We also want to call updateContours asynchronously whenever the contour is redrawn, for example, upon a zoom/pan event, or when one of the relevant contour properties (e.g., LevelStep or *Data) changes. To do this, we add a callback listener to the contour object’s [undocumented] MarkedClean event that reruns our updateContours function:

[X,Y,Z] = peaks;
[C,hContour] = contour(X,Y,Z, 'ShowText','on', 'LevelStep',1);
% Update the contours immediately, and also whenever the contour is redrawn
updateContours(hContour);
addlistener(hContour, 'MarkedClean', @(h,e)updateContours(hContour));

Contour level values

As noted in my comment reply below, the contour lines (hContour.EdgePrims) correspond to the contour levels (hContour.LevelList).
For example, to make all negative contour lines dotted, you can do the following:

[C,hContour] = contour(peaks, 'ShowText','on', 'LevelStep',1); drawnow
set(hContour.EdgePrims(hContour.LevelList<0), 'LineStyle', 'dotted');

Prediction about forward compatibility

As I noted on my previous post on contour plot customization, I am marking this article as “High risk of breaking in future Matlab versions“, not because of the basic functionality (being important enough I don’t presume it will go away anytime soon) but because of the property names: TextPrims, EdgePrims and FacePrims don’t seem to be very user-friendly property names. So far MathWorks has been very diligent in making its object properties have meaningful names, and so I assume that when the time comes to expose these properties, they will be renamed (perhaps to TextHandles, EdgeHandles and FaceHandles, or perhaps LabelHandles, LineHandles and FillHandles). For this reason, even if you find out in some future Matlab release that TextPrims, EdgePrims and FacePrims don’t exist, perhaps they still exist and simply have different names. Note that these properties have not changed their names or functionality in the past 3 years, so while it could well happen next year, it could also remain unchanged for many years to come. The exact same thing can be said for the MarkedClean event.

Professional assistance anyone?

As shown by this and many other posts on this site, a polished interface and functionality is often composed of small professional touches, many of which are not exposed in the official Matlab documentation for various reasons. So if you need top-quality professional appearance/functionality in your Matlab program, or maybe just a Matlab program that is dependable, robust and highly-performant, consider employing my consulting services.

9 Responses

Elbio November 17, 2017 at 00:02 Reply
Hi Yair:

Using the old matlab utilities it was possible to get the Cdata value associated with each line in the contour plot:
[c,h]=contourf(peaks,[-9:1:9]); h1=get(h,'children'); hdd=get(h1(1),'Cdata'); hdd=8
[c,h]=contourf(peaks,[-9:1:9]); h1=get(h,'children'); hdd=get(h1(1),'Cdata'); hdd=8
This utility was useful to dash the negative contours of some plot. Apparently there is no “cdata” value in the h.EdgePrims properties.

How do you think that one can proceed in order to get these values?

Regards,

Elbio

Yair Altman November 17, 2017 at 10:17 Reply
@Elbio – in HG2 (R2014b or newer) the contour lines (hContour.EdgePrims) correspond to the contour levels (hContour.LevelList). For example, to make all negative contour lines dotted, you can do the following:
[C,hContour] = contour(peaks, 'ShowText','on', 'LevelStep',1); drawnow set(hContour.EdgePrims(hContour.LevelList<0), 'LineStyle', 'dotted');
[C,hContour] = contour(peaks, 'ShowText','on', 'LevelStep',1); drawnow set(hContour.EdgePrims(hContour.LevelList<0), 'LineStyle', 'dotted');
I added an explanation and screenshot to the main article text above.

Elbio November 17, 2017 at 16:16
Hi Yair:

Many thanks for your helpful answer. I found a problem though when using contourf.
[c,h] = contourf(peaks,'LevelStep',1); drawnow levels = h.LevelList; lines = h.EdgePrims; set(lines(levels<0), 'LineStyle', 'dotted'); set(lines(levels==0), 'LineWidth', 2);
[c,h] = contourf(peaks,'LevelStep',1); drawnow levels = h.LevelList; lines = h.EdgePrims; set(lines(levels<0), 'LineStyle', 'dotted'); set(lines(levels==0), 'LineWidth', 2);
Instead of highlighting the zero line it is the “1” line the one that appears wider.
It might be related to the different size of the levels and lines arrays. For example if I tried to change the linestyle using:
[c,h] = contourf(peaks,[-9:1:9]); levels = h.LevelList; lines = h.EdgePrims; set(lines(levels<0), 'LineStyle', 'dotted');
[c,h] = contourf(peaks,[-9:1:9]); levels = h.LevelList; lines = h.EdgePrims; set(lines(levels<0), 'LineStyle', 'dotted');
there are dotted lines with positive values.

Regards,
Elbio.

Yair Altman November 18, 2017 at 17:57

Unlike contour, the contourf function returns a list of levels that includes the minimum value, which does not correspond to any contour line ([-6.5466,-6,-5,-4,...] rather than [-6,-5,-4,...]). So the solution for contourf is simply to equate levels(2:end) with lines, as follows:

[c,hContour] = contourf(peaks, 'LevelStep',1, 'ShowText','on'); drawnow
levels = hContour.LevelList(2:end);
lines  = hContour.EdgePrims;
set(lines(levels<0),  'LineStyle', 'dotted');
set(lines(levels==0), 'LineWidth', 2);

Alon December 13, 2017 at 16:27 Reply

Hello Yair,
Note that if there are unused contour lines, as may be the case when hContour.LevelListMode is set to manual, the above code will not work, as hContour.EdgePrims enumerates only the visible contour lines (while not hinting at the contour level they are related to), while hContour.LevelList enumerates them all.
Instead, you must enumerate the visible contour lines:

k = 1;
activecontours = [];
while k < size(hContour.ContourMatrix,2)
    activecontours = [activecontours hContour.ContourMatrix(1,k)];
    k = k + hContour.ContourMatrix(2,k) + 1;
end
levels = unique(activecontours);

Then use the levels generated in the code you supplied.

Best regards,
Alon

Peter Cook December 16, 2017 at 00:08 Reply

@Alon
This method runs very slow for a complex contour (e.g. not necessarily in size but perhaps one generated from real, noisy, data), which led me to experiment with some other methods. In the case where contour levels are specified to the function, I found a heuristic that seems to work:

[c,hContour] = contourf(imgaussfilt(noisyData,2),contourLevels);
hL = hContour.EdgePrims;
whichLevels = sum(bsxfun(@eq,c(1,:)',contourLevels)) > 10;
 
>> length(contourLevels)
ans =
    32
 
>> length(hL)
ans =
    24
 
>> length(contourLevels(whichLevels))
ans =
    24

I’m sure this might fail on some other contour plots, but it has worked on several I generated. Thoughts?

Steve November 7, 2018 at 11:16 Reply

You can also use clabel(c,hContour,'FontSize',10,'Color',[1 1 1])
Shan March 26, 2019 at 15:59 Reply
Hi,
Thank you so much for this improvement.
But when I use the function ax=gca, it will overrun the set(hContour.EdgePrims(hContour.LevelList<0),'LineStyle','dotted');
here is my code:
[X,Y,Z] = peaks; [C,hContour] = contour(peaks,[-8 -6 -4 -2 -0 2 4 6 8], 'ShowText','on'); drawnow set(hContour.EdgePrims(hContour.LevelList<0),'LineStyle','dotted'); ax=gca; ax.YDir = 'reverse';
[X,Y,Z] = peaks; [C,hContour] = contour(peaks,[-8 -6 -4 -2 -0 2 4 6 8], 'ShowText','on'); drawnow set(hContour.EdgePrims(hContour.LevelList<0),'LineStyle','dotted'); ax=gca; ax.YDir = 'reverse';
So do you have any solution for this?
Thanks

Yair Altman March 29, 2019 at 16:26 Reply

@Shan – The ax.YDir='reverse' command, and any other similar command that repaints the axes, reverts the EdgePrims to their default (documented) behavior. So after any such command, you need to redo the setting of the undocumented functionality (set(hContour.EdgePrims...)

HTML tags such as <b> or <i> are accepted.
Wrap code fragments inside <pre lang="matlab"> tags, like this:

<pre lang="matlab">
a = magic(3);
disp(sum(a))
</pre>

I reserve the right to edit/delete comments (read the site policies).
Not all comments will be answered. You can always email me (altmany at gmail) for private consulting.

Click here to cancel reply.

Maurizio (10 days 9 hours ago): Hi Yair, how can I define a callback for a cell/row/column selection? In createTable you can define a data changed callback, but if you simply select a cell, how can you define a...
Donato (12 days 9 hours ago): Hi Yair, it seems that in Matlab R2019b this method doesn’t work. Have you some solutions? Thanks.
Maurizio (13 days 19 hours ago): Thank you Yair, I’ve supposed it, but I was not sure. Maurizio
Yair Altman (14 days 10 hours ago): headers is a simple cell array of strings (column header names). I thought that was pretty obvious from the context… Additional types of uitable customizations are...
Maurizio (14 days 10 hours ago): Hi Yair, i’m trying to use your code example to change the colors of a table cell, but I have a doubt: in the following part of your code: % Yellow background for significant...
Mike (17 days 11 hours ago): When I use the suggestion above to set the ‘defaultAxesCreateFcn 217;, it works as expected in that the axes toolbar is gone and the default behavior is to zoom. However,...
Yair Altman (30 days 18 hours ago): @Maurizio – instead of using the integrated Panel title, you can use a separate label control (uicontrol('Style','text',...) or a JLabel). Alternatively, you can customize...
Maurizio Giardina (30 days 19 hours ago): Hi Yair, make transparent panel background is what I need for my application, but I have a problem:the panels I use have also a title, and the background of the title is...
Menno (34 days 14 hours ago): Dear Yair, As an experienced Matlab user, I have been following your site for quite some time now. With your great series of articles on the Toolstrip, I managed to build a...
Iliya Romm (53 days 17 hours ago): To anybody attempting this in R2019b (and later?): unless you specify the image size, nothing will be shown!. A solution is presented in this answer str = [''];
Yair Altman (57 days 18 hours ago): @Don – you can control the components of controllib.widget.Slider using its internal properties, as follows: >> warning off MATLAB:structOnObject % avoid warning >>...
Don (57 days 20 hours ago): I do not see a visible (on/off) property. Is there a way hide/unhide these, specifically controllib.widget.Slider. I currently just use Position and move it out of visible range. Also,...
Philip Howard (64 days 13 hours ago): Yair, Thank you for your post. Is it possible to use Matlab functions inside the SQL query for method using sqlite-jdbc? I see here that you can create custom callback...
Yair Altman (72 days 19 hours ago): The default Java Look&Feel for UI buttons paints the border together with the contents, and apparently prevents changing both of them together (reference). Changing to a...
Jacob (73 days 4 hours ago): So, I’m having trouble finding information on this. If I change the border of a button, then change the background color, the border resets. Then I am not able to change the...