How to add a colormap to a subplot when using handles?

Hi everyone,

I'm currently trying to make a figure that is made up of several surface subplots (of 200x200 data) with a colormap applied to each one. I make each subplot in a loop and apply the settings of them in the loop, when I try to add a colormap (jet, for example) it doesn't apply the colormap to the subplots.

I think this is because I have decided to use handles for the subplots rather than how I was previously starting to writing it (see code below) because there are a lot of subplots and it seemed like a tedious way of doing it. I'm not that familiar with using handles but I have a feeling it is related to that but I can't find a 'colormap' setting in the handle settings in my array so any help/tips would be great

The current method I'm using (I've posted all the code for clarity):

clc; clear all; close all

%Read in averaged experimental images and their fits
N_state = [3 5 6 7 8 9 10 11]; %List of states probed in experiment
num_states = length(N_state);  %Number of states probed

filenames = cell(4, 8);        %Create a cell array to store the filenames

%String components of the experimental and fitted files
s1 = 'N'; s2 = '_amoeba_';
s_exph = 'mask_h'; s_fith = 'imout_h';
s_expv = 'mask_v'; s_fitv = 'imout_v';
filetype = '.txt';

%For loop for creating the filenames of each file, ordered so each matrix
%element is where the images will be in the diagram
for n = 1:num_states
    filenames(1, n) = cellstr(strcat('N', num2str(N_state(1, n)), s2, s_exph, filetype));
    filenames(2, n) = cellstr(strcat('N', num2str(N_state(1, n)), s2, s_fith, filetype));
    filenames(3, n) = cellstr(strcat('N', num2str(N_state(1, n)), s2, s_expv, filetype));
    filenames(4, n) = cellstr(strcat('N', num2str(N_state(1, n)), s2, s_fitv, filetype));
end

images = cell(4,num_states); %Cell array to store the images

%For loop for reading in the images for the figures
for n = 1:num_states
    for m = 1:4
        images{m,n} = dlmread(char(filenames(m,n)));
    end
end

%Dimensions of the figure and properties that might want altering
r = 4; c = 8;
tot = r*c;
pos = 0;
view_az = 0; view_el = 20;

%For loops to plot each subplot with the following settings
figure(1)
for k1 = 1:r
    for k2 = 1:c
        pos = pos + 1;
        subplot(r,c,pos)
            s{pos} = surf(images{k1, k2});
            view(view_az, view_el)
            axis square
            zlim([0 inf])
            colormap jet %Doesn't change the colormap of the subplots
            
    end
end

The old way is shown here but it did let me apply a colormap:

subplot(r,c,1)
s11 = surf(exp_H); %s11 refers to the 1st row, first column i.e. s[r,c]
colormap jet
shading interp
axis square
view(view_az, view_el)
zlim([0 inf])
set(gca, 'visible', 'off')

subplot(r,c,9)
s12 = surf(fit_H);
colormap jet
shading interp
axis square
view(view_az, view_el)
zlim([0 inf])
%set(gca, 'visible', 'off')

Thanks in advance!

[Mohammad Sami]

colormap can be called as a function.

pass in the axes handle as the first argument.

Answer 1

[Joseph Leng]

Would you be able to show that as an example?

[Mohammad Sami]

a1 = subplot(211);

surf(a1,peaks);

colormap(a1,'jet');

a2 = subplot(212);

surf(a2,peaks);

colormap(a2,'parula');

[Joseph Leng]

I wasn't able to fix the problem from just this alone, I ended up getting black coloured surfaces (but I didn't know that's how you obtain the axes for the surfaces so that helped!)

In the end I found that changing the shading to 'flat' gave the surfaces the desired colormap

figure(1)
for k1 = 1:r
    for k2 = 1:c
        pos = pos + 1;
        sp{pos} = subplot(r,c,pos);
                    s{pos} = surf(images{k1, k2});
                        view(view_az, view_el)
                        axis square
                        zlim([0 inf])
                        set(sp{pos}, 'visible', 'off')
                        colormap(sp{pos}, 'jet')
                        shading flat
    end
end