Styles

Styles provide theme-level control over visual appearance. They affect fonts, grids, backgrounds, and default colormaps without changing your code.

Available Styles

SpectroChemPy includes several built-in styles:

[1]:

import spectrochempy as scp

ds = scp.read("irdata/nh4y-activation.spg")

# List style files in the stylesheets directory
from pathlib import Path

styles_dir = Path(scp.preferences.stylesheets)
print("Available styles:")
for f in sorted(styles_dir.glob("*.mplstyle")):
    print(f"  - {f.stem}")

Available styles:
  - grayscale
  - mycustom
  - notebook
  - paper
  - poster
  - sans
  - scpy
  - serif
  - talk

Applying a Style

Apply a style to a single plot:

[2]:

_ = ds.plot(style="grayscale")
../../_images/userguide_plotting_styles_4_0.png

Combining Style with Options

Styles work with all other plot options:

[3]:

_ = ds.plot(style="grayscale", xlim=(1800, 1500), ylim=(0, 2.5), grid=True)
../../_images/userguide_plotting_styles_6_0.png

Setting a Default Style

Make a style persistent across your session and future sessions by setting it in preferences:

[4]:

original_style = scp.preferences.style
scp.preferences.style = "grayscale"
_ = ds.plot()
../../_images/userguide_plotting_styles_8_0.png 
[5]:

scp.preferences.style = "ggplot"
_ = ds.plot()
../../_images/userguide_plotting_styles_9_0.png

Reset to default:

[6]:

scp.preferences.style = original_style

Style Characteristics

Style

Characteristics

scpy

Default SpectroChemPy appearance

grayscale

Grayscale colors, sets image.cmap to “gray”

serif

Serif fonts

sans

Sans-serif fonts

paper

Smaller fonts, higher DPI

notebook

Optimized for Jupyter

talk

Large fonts for presentations

poster

Very large fonts

Creating Custom Styles

You can create your own style based on current preferences:

[7]:

# Set preferences
prefs = scp.preferences
prefs.colormap_sequential = "jet"
prefs.font.family = "monospace"
prefs.font.size = 30
prefs.axes.grid = True

# Create a custom style
prefs.makestyle("mycustom")

# Reset to defaults
prefs.reset()

# Now use your custom style
_ = ds.plot(style="mycustom")
../../_images/userguide_plotting_styles_14_0.png

How Styles Affect Colormaps

Styles affect colormaps only when:

  1. The style explicitly sets image.cmap in its definition

  2. prefs.colormap is set to “auto” (the default)

The grayscale style sets image.cmap = "gray", so it changes the colormap when prefs.colormap = "auto". If you set a specific prefs.colormap, the style will not override it.

Best Practice

  • Use styles for theme-level changes (publication, presentation)

  • Use kwargs for plot-specific adjustments

  • Use preferences for session defaults

This separation keeps your code flexible and reproducible.