Normalisation for RGB imshow

doc/plotting.rst

@@ -305,6 +305,8 @@ example, consider the original data in Kelvins rather than Celsius:
 The Celsius data contain 0, so a diverging color map was used. The
 Kelvins do not have 0, so the default color map was used.
 
+.. _robust-plotting:
+
 Robust
 ~~~~~~
 

doc/whats-new.rst

@@ -41,6 +41,7 @@ Enhancements
 - Support for using `Zarr`_ as storage layer for xarray.
   By `Ryan Abernathey <https://github.com/rabernat>`_.
 - :func:`xarray.plot.imshow` now handles RGB and RGBA images.
+  Saturation can be adjusted with ``vmin`` and ``vmax``, or with ``robust=True``.
   By `Zac Hatfield-Dodds <https://github.com/Zac-HD>`_.
 - Experimental support for parsing ENVI metadata to coordinates and attributes
   in :py:func:`xarray.open_rasterio`.

xarray/plot/plot.py

@@ -15,8 +15,8 @@
 import pandas as pd
 from datetime import datetime
 
-from .utils import (_determine_cmap_params, _infer_xy_labels, get_axis,
-                    import_matplotlib_pyplot)
+from .utils import (ROBUST_PERCENTILE, _determine_cmap_params,
+                    _infer_xy_labels, get_axis, import_matplotlib_pyplot)
 from .facetgrid import FacetGrid
 from xarray.core.pycompat import basestring
 
@@ -326,6 +326,39 @@ def line(self, *args, **kwargs):
         return line(self._da, *args, **kwargs)
 
 
+def _rescale_imshow_rgb(darray, vmin, vmax, robust):
+    assert robust or vmin is not None or vmax is not None
+    # There's a cyclic dependency via DataArray, so we can't import from
+    # xarray.ufuncs in global scope.
+    from xarray.ufuncs import maximum, minimum
+    # Calculate vmin and vmax automatically for `robust=True`
+    if robust:
+        if vmax is None:
+            vmax = np.nanpercentile(darray, 100 - ROBUST_PERCENTILE)
+        if vmin is None:
+            vmin = np.nanpercentile(darray, ROBUST_PERCENTILE)
+    # If not robust and one bound is None, calculate the default other bound
+    # and check that an interval between them exists.
+    elif vmax is None:
+        vmax = 255 if np.issubdtype(darray.dtype, np.integer) else 1
+        if vmax < vmin:
+            raise ValueError(
+                'vmin=%r is less than the default vmax (%r) - you must supply '
+                'a vmax > vmin in this case.' % (vmin, vmax))
+    elif vmin is None:
+        vmin = 0
+        if vmin > vmax:
+            raise ValueError(
+                'vmax=%r is less than the default vmin (0) - you must supply '
+                'a vmin < vmax in this case.' % vmax)
+    # Scale interval [vmin .. vmax] to [0 .. 1], with darray as 64-bit float
+    # to avoid precision loss, integer over/underflow, etc with extreme inputs.
+    # After scaling, downcast to 32-bit float.  This substantially reduces
+    # memory usage after we hand `darray` off to matplotlib.
+    darray = ((darray.astype('f8') - vmin) / (vmax - vmin)).astype('f4')
+    return minimum(maximum(darray, 0), 1)
+
+
 def _plot2d(plotfunc):
     """
     Decorator for common 2d plotting logic
@@ -449,6 +482,11 @@ def newplotfunc(darray, x=None, y=None, figsize=None, size=None,
         if imshow_rgb:
             # Don't add a colorbar when showing an image with explicit colors
             add_colorbar = False
+            # Matplotlib does not support normalising RGB data, so do it here.
+            # See eg. https://github.com/matplotlib/matplotlib/pull/10220
+            if robust or vmax is not None or vmin is not None:
+                darray = _rescale_imshow_rgb(darray, vmin, vmax, robust)
+                vmin, vmax, robust = None, None, False
 
         # Handle facetgrids first
         if row or col:
@@ -625,6 +663,11 @@ def imshow(x, y, z, ax, **kwargs):
     dimension can be interpreted as RGB or RGBA color channels and
     allows this dimension to be specified via the kwarg ``rgb=``.
 
+    Unlike matplotlib, Xarray can apply ``vmin`` and ``vmax`` to RGB or RGBA
+    data, by applying a single scaling factor and offset to all bands.
+    Passing  ``robust=True`` infers ``vmin`` and ``vmax``
+    :ref:`in the usual way <robust-plotting>`.
+
     .. note::
         This function needs uniformly spaced coordinates to
         properly label the axes. Call DataArray.plot() to check.

xarray/plot/utils.py

@@ -11,6 +11,9 @@
 from ..core.utils import is_scalar
 
 
+ROBUST_PERCENTILE = 2.0
+
+
 def _load_default_cmap(fname='default_colormap.csv'):
     """
     Returns viridis color map
@@ -165,7 +168,6 @@ def _determine_cmap_params(plot_data, vmin=None, vmax=None, cmap=None,
     cmap_params : dict
         Use depends on the type of the plotting function
     """
-    ROBUST_PERCENTILE = 2.0
     import matplotlib as mpl
 
     calc_data = np.ravel(plot_data[~pd.isnull(plot_data)])

xarray/tests/test_plot.py

@@ -1126,6 +1126,26 @@ def test_rgb_errors_bad_dim_sizes(self):
         with pytest.raises(ValueError):
             arr.plot.imshow(rgb='band')
 
+    def test_normalize_rgb_imshow(self):
+        for kwds in (
+            dict(vmin=-1), dict(vmax=2),
+            dict(vmin=-1, vmax=1), dict(vmin=0, vmax=0),
+            dict(vmin=0, robust=True), dict(vmax=-1, robust=True),
+        ):
+            da = DataArray(easy_array((5, 5, 3), start=-0.6, stop=1.4))
+            arr = da.plot.imshow(**kwds).get_array()
+            assert 0 <= arr.min() <= arr.max() <= 1, kwds
+
+    def test_normalize_rgb_one_arg_error(self):
+        da = DataArray(easy_array((5, 5, 3), start=-0.6, stop=1.4))
+        # If passed one bound that implies all out of range, error:
+        for kwds in [dict(vmax=-1), dict(vmin=2)]:
+            with pytest.raises(ValueError):
+                da.plot.imshow(**kwds)
+        # If passed two that's just moving the range, *not* an error:
+        for kwds in [dict(vmax=-1, vmin=-1.2), dict(vmin=2, vmax=2.1)]:
+            da.plot.imshow(**kwds)
+
 
 class TestFacetGrid(PlotTestCase):
     def setUp(self):