Get legend as a separate picture in Matplotlib

This could work:

import pylab
fig = pylab.figure()
figlegend = pylab.figure(figsize=(3,2))
ax = fig.add_subplot(111)
lines = ax.plot(range(10), pylab.randn(10), range(10), pylab.randn(10))
figlegend.legend(lines, ('one', 'two'), 'center')
fig.show()
figlegend.show()
figlegend.savefig('legend.png')

You may limit the saved region of a figure to the bounding box of the legend using the bbox_inches argument to fig.savefig. Below to versions of a function which you can simply call with the legend you want to save as argument. You may either use the legend created in the original figure here (and remove it afterwards, legend.remove()) or you may create a new figure for the legend and simply use the function as it is.

Export legend boundingbox

In case the complete legend shall be saved, the bounding box supplied to the bbox_inches argument would be simply the transformed bounding box of the legend. This works well if the legend has no border around it.

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

colors = ["crimson", "purple", "gold"]
f = lambda m,c: plt.plot([],[],marker=m, color=c, ls="none")[0]
handles = [f("s", colors[i]) for i in range(3)]
labels = colors
legend = plt.legend(handles, labels, loc=3, framealpha=1, frameon=False)

def export_legend(legend, filename="legend.png"):
    fig  = legend.figure
    fig.canvas.draw()
    bbox  = legend.get_window_extent().transformed(fig.dpi_scale_trans.inverted())
    fig.savefig(filename, dpi="figure", bbox_inches=bbox)

export_legend(legend)
plt.show()

Export extended legend bounding box

If there is a border around the legend, the above solution may be suboptimal. In this case it makes sense to extend the bounding box by some pixels to include the border to its full.

import numpy as np
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

colors = ["crimson", "purple", "gold"]
f = lambda m,c: plt.plot([],[],marker=m, color=c, ls="none")[0]
handles = [f("s", colors[i]) for i in range(3)]
labels = colors
legend = plt.legend(handles, labels, loc=3, framealpha=1, frameon=True)

def export_legend(legend, filename="legend.png", expand=[-5,-5,5,5]):
    fig  = legend.figure
    fig.canvas.draw()
    bbox  = legend.get_window_extent()
    bbox = bbox.from_extents(*(bbox.extents + np.array(expand)))
    bbox = bbox.transformed(fig.dpi_scale_trans.inverted())
    fig.savefig(filename, dpi="figure", bbox_inches=bbox)

export_legend(legend)
plt.show()