How do you directly overlay a scatter plot on top of a jpg image in matplotlib / Python?

Question

I need to rapidly plot jpg frames that result as the output of a tracking algorithm. Companion with the jpg frames are text files containing simple (x,y) data locating the image targets that are being tracked. I would like to use matplotlib to plot the jpg images, then overlay a scatter plot of the (x,y) data which gets read from the text file and stored into a Pythonic list. Below is code that will plot the jpg image, but in all of the scouring I have done of matplotlib, scipy, and PIL manuals and help pages, I cannot find anything that explains how to maintain this plot window and simply overlay a scatter plot of simple markers at various (x,y) locations in the image. Any help is greatly appreciated.

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt;
im = plt.imread(image_name);
implot = plt.imshow(im);
plt.show()

question from:https://stackoverflow.com/questions/5073386/how-do-you-directly-overlay-a-scatter-plot-on-top-of-a-jpg-image-in-matplotlib

Answer 1

The pyplot.scatter() function was tailor made for this reason:

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
im = plt.imread(image_name)
implot = plt.imshow(im)

# put a blue dot at (10, 20)
plt.scatter([10], [20])

# put a red dot, size 40, at 2 locations:
plt.scatter(x=[30, 40], y=[50, 60], c='r', s=40)

plt.show()

See the documentation for more info.