Plots with neon-glow in Matplotlib.

neon_example.png

neon_plots.py

# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-
"""
Attempt of neon-glowing plots.

@author: Nicolás Guarín-Zapata
@date: September 2020
"""
import numpy as np
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt


def neon_plot(x, y, ax=None):
    if ax is None:
        ax = plt.gca()
    line, = ax.plot(x, y, lw=1, zorder=6)
    for cont in range(6, 1, -1):
        ax.plot(x, y, lw=cont, color=line.get_color(), zorder=5,
                alpha=0.05)
    return ax


# Styling
repo = "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nicoguaro/matplotlib_styles/master"
style = repo + "/styles/neon.mplstyle"
plt.style.use(style)

# Plotting
x = np.linspace(0, 4, 100)
y = np.sin(np.pi*x + 1e-6)/(np.pi*x + 1e-6)
plt.figure(figsize=(6, 4))
for cont in range(5):
    neon_plot(x, y/(cont + 1))


plt.xlabel("One axis")
plt.ylabel("The other axis")
plt.grid(zorder=3, alpha=0.2)
plt.savefig("neon_example.png", dpi=300, bbox_inches="tight")
plt.show()

Thank you, this looks really pretty!
Any ideas on how to make it support linestyles? I'm trying with dashed and it won't look good since the glow lines change lw, so dashed glow is misplaced relative to the main line. I tried to solve it myself, but I'm not very smart. This looks like it might help though, in case you'll want to look into it.

@mrmeloman, you can change the linestyle

def neon_plot(x, y, ax=None):
    if ax is None:
        ax = plt.gca()
    line, = ax.plot(x, y, lw=1, zorder=6, ls="dashed")
    for cont in range(6, 1, -1):
        ax.plot(x, y, lw=cont, color=line.get_color(), zorder=5,
                alpha=0.05, ls="dashed")
    return ax

@mrmeloman, you can change the linestyle

def neon_plot(x, y, ax=None):
    if ax is None:
        ax = plt.gca()
    line, = ax.plot(x, y, lw=1, zorder=6, ls="dashed")
    for cont in range(6, 1, -1):
        ax.plot(x, y, lw=cont, color=line.get_color(), zorder=5,
                alpha=0.05, ls="dashed")
    return ax

Look closely at the glow, it's not consistent with the line. Can be more or less visible on different sizes

@mrmeloman, I know. I would suggest to use a solid line for the glow, though.