# Independent custom colorbar in Plots?
**URL:** https://discourse.julialang.org/t/independent-custom-colorbar-in-plots/91479
**Category:** General Usage
**Tags:** plotting, plots
**Created:** [December 9, 2022, 2:28pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/independent-custom-colorbar-in-plots/91479 "2022-12-09T14:28:57Z")
**Posts on this page:** 4
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@sim](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/sim)
#### Post date: [December 9, 2022, 2:28pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/independent-custom-colorbar-in-plots/91479/1 "2022-12-09T14:28:57Z")
Hi, let’s suppose I have the following (essentially empty) plot:
```julia
plot(xlabel="x axis", ylabel="y axis")
plot!(rand(10))
```
Now, for some reason, I want to add a colorbar to this figure (yes, the colorbar has nothing to do with the plot… _yet_).
I just want an independant colorbar, say on the right of the figure, showing some colormap, for example `cmap=cgrad(:thermal)`, with values ranging between 0 and 1.
I found many issues related to the colorbar itself, but I could not understand how to create a custom colormap in Plots.jl. Any help appreciated !
---
### Author:  [@rafael.guerra](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/rafael.guerra)
#### Post date: [December 9, 2022, 3:22pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/independent-custom-colorbar-in-plots/91479/2 "2022-12-09T15:22:42Z")
A workaround using layouts:
```julia
using Plots; gr()
l = @layout [a{0.95w} b]
cmap = cgrad(:thermal)
p1 = plot(rand(10), xlabel="x axis", ylabel="y axis")
p2 = heatmap(rand(2,2), clims=(0,1), framestyle=:none, c=cmap, cbar=true, lims=(-1,0))
plot(p1, p2, layout=l)
```
---
### Author:  [@joa-quim](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/joa-quim)
#### Post date: [December 9, 2022, 3:35pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/independent-custom-colorbar-in-plots/91479/3 "2022-12-09T15:35:50Z")
And with GMT
```julia
using GMT
C = makecpt(range=(0,1), cmap=:turbo);
plot(rand(10), lc=:blue, xlabel="x axis", ylabel="y axis", colorbar=true, show=true)
```
---
### Author:  [@jules](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/jules)
#### Post date: [December 9, 2022, 6:39pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/independent-custom-colorbar-in-plots/91479/4 "2022-12-09T18:39:23Z")
If we’re adding how other plotting packages handle this, this is a good example how Makie does these things a bit differently and you add a colorbar explicitly instead of using a plotting command as a workaround:
```julia
using CairoMakie
f, ax, sc = lines(rand(10))
cb = Colorbar(f[1, 2], colormap = :turbo, colorrange = (0, 1))
f
```
