Change the color of x and y axis of a graph from a GUI in MATLAB

Question

I am trying to change the color of a graph I created in MATLAB GUIDE. I initially set the colors of the x-axis and y-axis to be white in GUIDE but whenever I output to the graph, the both axes change color back to the default which is black. This is the code I am using to output my graph :

axes(handles.axes1); % axes1 is the tag for my graph in GUIDE
time = 0:1/fs:(length(handles.x)-1)/fs;
plot(time,handles.x);
title('Original Signal');

I looked at MATLAB documentation but did not find an example related to my problem since it is not the actual graph I want the color change but the x and y axis. Is this possible?

Answer 1

Some Research

Thanks to OP’s question I have learnt something new today. So, I knew that one can change the XColor of the axes by code too, with the command – set(handles.axes1,'XColor',colorname), where colorname could be any color, like ‘r’ for red, ‘k’ for black, etc. So, I would have suggested to use set(handles.axes1,'XColor',’w’), but then one has to remember what XColor was set through GUIDE and copy over that information to the associated M-file, which isn’t “elegant enough”.

My initial idea was to extract that XColor info from Fig-file at the initialization stage of the GUI, which is at GUINAME_ OpeningFcn, save it into the handles structure and use it later on in callback functions through the handles again. I tried to call color_data = get(handles.axes1,'XColor') at the end of this function to get the XColor info as a three element vector. That didn’t work as it was giving me [1 1 1] which represents the default color white.

Next obvious thing was to put the color_data extracting command at the start of GUINAME_ OpeningFcn, before handles.output is set inside that function and it worked! Thus, the conclusion is that handles.output = hObject is putting at least Color information to default values.

Back to work

For OP, the steps would be following :

Put this at the start of GUINAME_ OpeningFcn

axes1_XColor = get(handles.axes1,'XColor');
axes1_YColor = get(handles.axes1,'YColor');

handles.axes1_XColor = axes1_XColor;
handles.axes1_YColor = axes1_YColor;

set(handles.axes1,'XColor',handles.axes1_XColor);
set(handles.axes1,'YColor',handles.axes1_YColor);

When plotting inside any function that has handles as one of the inputs, use the following commands after plot

set(handles.axes1,'XColor',handles.axes1_XColor);
set(handles.axes1,'YColor',handles.axes1_YColor);

Thus, for your example it would be –

axes(handles.axes1); % axes1 is the tag for my graph in GUIDE
time = 0:1/fs:(length(handles.x)-1)/fs;
plot(time,handles.x);
title('Original Signal');

set(handles.axes1,'XColor',handles.axes1_XColor);
set(handles.axes1,'YColor',handles.axes1_YColor);

Let’s hope it works for you, let us know!

Answer 2

Calling high level plotting functions like plot() resets the axes properties to their defaults. To preserve your custom properties, use the line() function instead:

axes(handles.axes1);
time = 0:1/fs:(length(handles.x)-1)/fs;
line(time,handles.x);
title('Original Signal');