ipython notebook --pylab inline: zooming of a plot

Solution 1:

You can now use %matplotlib notebook instead of %matplotlib inline and you'll be able to interact with your plots.

Solution 2:

Now thanks to mpld3 it's super easy to enable zooming in inline plots!

All you have to do is install mpld3 (pip install mpld3), and then add this to your notebook:

%matplotlib inline
import mpld3
mpld3.enable_notebook()

Now your plots will get a toolbar menu at the bottom left, in which you can enable mouse zooming :)

Solution 3:

At present, the closest you can come is to redraw it at a larger size using the figsize function. It expects dimensions in inches, which caught me out the first time I tried to use it.

There are some plants for a rich backend that would allow plots to be manipulated live, using HTML5, but I think it will be a few more months before that's ready.

If you're using the notebook on your local computer, for now the easiest option might be not to use inline mode, so the plots pop up as separate windows.

Solution 4:

mpld3 slowed down the execution of my notebooks. I found it better to use the nbagg backend that provides the same interactive tools but also allows to save graphs by the right-click menu:

import matplotlib
matplotlib.use('nbagg')
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

Solution 5:

Another good example that has emerged recently is to outsource the job to plotly:

https://plot.ly/python/3d-plots-tutorial/

Let them handle the rendering, panning, and zooming for you!