Question

What is antialiased in matplotlib.collections and how do you set the parameter for it?

Answer 1

The antialiased keyword argument controls whether or not a particular matplotlib artist (e.g. line, polygon, etc) is drawn with antialising or not.

As an example, notice the difference in the two plots below:

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

plt.subplot(1,2,1)
plt.plot(range(10), antialiased=False)
plt.title('Antialiasing Off')

plt.subplot(1,2,2)
plt.plot(range(10), antialiased=True)
plt.title('Antialiasing On')

plt.show()

Non-antialiased plotting will be faster, so if you’re plotting a large amount of data, it can be worthwhile to turn it off.