Is there a way to get the content of a contourf plot as an image matrix? I want rasterize only the content, not the axes, labels and the empty space of the entire figure.
My goal is to overlay a transparent, colored contour plot over a grayscale image and I don't see another way, since MATLAB has only one colormap per figure.
Example from the frame2im documentation:
Create and capture an image using getframe and frame2im:
peaks %Make figure
f = getframe; %Capture screen shot
[im,map] = frame2im(f); %Return associated image data
if isempty(map) %Truecolor system
rgb = im;
else %Indexed system
rgb = ind2rgb(im,map); %Convert image data
end
Not a direct answer to the question, but this is how I think you could achieve your goal:
%# load in grayscale image
gray_im = rgb2gray(imread('peppers.png'));
%# converting n x m grey image to n x m x 3 rgb gray image
rgb_gray_im = cat( 3, gray_im, gray_im, gray_im );
%# displaying this image
imshow( rgb_gray_im );
%# plotting contourf on top with arbitrary colourmap
hold on
h = axes('position', [0.5, 0.5, 0.2, 0.2]);
z = peaks;
contourf(h, z, [min(z(:)), -6 : 8]);
Which gives the result:
The figure's colourmap is being used for the contourf plot. The background image is not relying on a colourmap, and is instead being displayed in truecolour - i.e. each pixel is being displayed as an RGB value defined in rgb_gray_im.
There are also other ways of getting around the MATLAB colourmap restrictions: see for example this blog post or these answers.
