# Plots with log or symlog scale
**URL:** https://discourse.julialang.org/t/plots-with-log-or-symlog-scale/15961
**Category:** Visualization
**Tags:** plots
**Created:** [October 6, 2018, 9:47am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/plots-with-log-or-symlog-scale/15961 "2018-10-06T09:47:47Z")
**Posts on this page:** 6
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@aplavin](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/aplavin)
#### Post date: [October 6, 2018, 9:47am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/plots-with-log-or-symlog-scale/15961/1 "2018-10-06T09:47:47Z")
I’m trying to make plots with log and symlog scales, but no success with Plots.jl so far. When I try `cgrad(scale=:log)` it gives strange results, see below. And there seem to be no other place to specify log-scale.
`A = randn(50, 100)`
`heatmap(log10.(abs.(A)), color=cgrad(:RdBu))`
gives
which has correct colors, but of course wrong color scale: I need it to show original values instead of logs.
With `scale=:log`:
`heatmap(abs.(A), color=cgrad(:RdBu, scale=:log))`
I totally don’t get how it computes colors here. And also I don’t find anything related to `symlog` scale.
For comparison, using `PyPlot`:
```julia-auto
imshow(log.(abs.(A)), cmap=:RdBu)
colorbar()
```
The same result as with `Plots`.
With log-scale:
```julia-auto
imshow(abs.(A), cmap=:RdBu, norm=matplotlib[:colors][:LogNorm]())
colorbar()
```
This is the correct way to show log-scale plot.
And finally, symlog:
```julia-auto
imshow(A, cmap=:RdBu, norm=matplotlib[:colors][:SymLogNorm](1e-2))
colorbar()
```
Is there a way to reproduce the last two plots (which use `PyPlot`) with `Plots` and non-pyplot backend?
---
### Author:  [@Mattriks](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/Mattriks)
#### Post date: [October 6, 2018, 11:25am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/plots-with-log-or-symlog-scale/15961/2 "2018-10-06T11:25:21Z")
There’s a Gadfly example here:
> [@histogram2d with logarithmic z-axis?](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/histogram2d-with-logarithmic-z-axis/9455/2):
>
> Yes in [Gadfly](http://gadflyjl.org/stable/): using RDatasets, Gadfly D = dataset("ggplot2","diamonds") p = plot(D, x=:Price, y=:Carat, Geom.histogram2d(xbincount=15, ybincount=15), Scale.color\_log10, Scale.x\_continuous(format=:plain), Guide.title("Diamonds") ) [diamonds]
---
### Author:  [@aplavin](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/aplavin)
#### Post date: [October 6, 2018, 12:44pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/plots-with-log-or-symlog-scale/15961/3 "2018-10-06T12:44:27Z")
But what about `Plots.jl`? I’m looking for an interactive web plot, using plotly backend.
---
### Author:  [@davidanthoff](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/davidanthoff)
#### Post date: [October 7, 2018, 1:31am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/plots-with-log-or-symlog-scale/15961/4 "2018-10-07T01:31:50Z")
Here is how far I got with [VegaLite.jl](https://github.com/fredo-dedup/VegaLite.jl):
```julia
df |> @vlplot(
:rect,
x={"x:o", title=nothing},
y={"y:o", title=nothing, sort=:ascending},
color={"v:q", title=nothing, scale={typ=:log}},
width=400, height=200,
config={
view={stroke=:transparent},
range={heatmap={scheme="redblue"}}
}
)
```
And that gives me:
You would probably want to change how the [axis](https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/axis.html) are shown, and probably also adjust the [color](https://vega.github.io/vega/docs/schemes/) range for the [scale](https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/scale.html).
Symlog scales are not supported at this point, but something that the vega/vega-lite team has on their radar: [Add symlog axis scaling? · Issue #1392 · vega/vega · GitHub](https://github.com/vega/vega/issues/1392).
You can create interactive web charts with vega-lite, the documentation for that is [here](https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/selection.html). It is quite different from plotly, so not sure it would match your needs. But you should be able to export the vega-lite spec with `yourspec |> save("foo.vegalite")` and then follow the instructions for vega-lite [embedding](https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/usage/embed.html) to put that onto a webpage.
---
### Author:  [@jwtkeeble](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/jwtkeeble)
#### Post date: [November 25, 2025, 3:08pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/plots-with-log-or-symlog-scale/15961/5 "2025-11-25T15:08:39Z")
Has there been any updates on adding `symlog` to `Plots.jl`?
---
### Author:  [@briochemc](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/briochemc)
#### Post date: [November 27, 2025, 1:49am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/plots-with-log-or-symlog-scale/15961/6 "2025-11-27T01:49:35Z")
Not sure about Plots.jl but [Makie + MakieExtra should work](https://juliaaplavin.github.io/MakieExtraDocs.jl/notebooks/examples.html#SymLog-and-asinh-scales). MWE:
```julia
using GLMakie, MakieExtra
A = randn(50, 100)
fig, ax, plt = heatmap(A; colorscale = SymLog(0.01), colormap = :RdBu)
Colorbar(fig[1, 2], plt; minorticks = BaseMulTicks(2:9), ticks = BaseMulTicks(1), minorticksvisible = true)
```
[EDIT: In original post I manually made the minor ticks but MakieExtra has the `BaseMulTicks` function for exactly that so I updated the MWE and image.]