import matplotlib.pyplot as plt import numpy as np ax = plt.axes([0.1, 0.3, 0.5, 0.5]) ax.pcolormesh(np.array([[1,2],[3,4]])) plt.yticks([0.5, 1.5], ["long long tick label", "tick label"]) plt.ylabel("My y-label") plt.title("Check saved figures for their bboxes") for ext in ["png", "pdf", "svg", "svgz", "eps"]: print "saving tight_bbox_test.%s" % (ext,) plt.savefig("tight_bbox_test.%s" % (ext,), bbox_inches="tight") plt.show()