Inserting subfigures

Inserting a small, embedded figure can be helpful in showing a detail of a figure, or more generally, to emphasize a particular part of a graphic. In this recipe, we are going to see how to insert a subfigure into a figure.

How to do it...

matplotlib allows us to create subregions in any part of a figure, and assign a figure to that subregion. In the following example, a subregion is created to show a detail of the curve:

import numpy as np
from matplotlib import pyplot as plt

X = np.linspace(-6, 6, 1024)
Y = np.sinc(X)

X_detail = np.linspace(-3, 3, 1024)
Y_detail = np.sinc(X_detail)

plt.plot(X, Y, c = 'k')

sub_axes = plt.axes([.6, .6, .25, .25])
sub_axes.plot(X_detail, Y_detail, c = 'k')
plt.setp(sub_axes)

plt.show()

The subregion is shown on the upper-right part of the figure.

How it works...

We start by creating a subregion on the figure as follows:

sub_axes = plt.axes([.6, .6, .25, .25])

The region is in figure-wise coordinates; that is, (0, 0) is the bottom-left corner...