Bar series plot, transparent colors on the bars

I use Matlab v. R2014b and have a problem with setting the bar series plot to have transparent colors. I add 9 different data sets (given by a&b) on one single plot/figure, using a for-loop and the hold on comand. A simplification of the code is given here:

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plotStyle = {'b','k','r','g','c','m','y',[1 0.270588 0],[0.180392 0.545098 0.341176]}; %setting colors for the plot

for i=1:9 %starting for-loop

 a=[1; 2; 3; 4; 5]; %vector giving moment, x-axis
 b=[10; 3; 5; 7; 9]; %vector giving number of occurences, y-axis    
 z=rand();
 a=a.*z;
 b=b.*z;
 % Both a & b is updated for every round of the loop, here exemplified with use of a random number

 figure (1)
 bar(a,b,'FaceColor',plotStyle{i},'EdgeColor',plotStyle{i});
 legendInfo{i} = ['Overpull' num2str(i)];
 hold on

end %ending for-loop

legend(legendInfo) %displaying legend

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To get transparent bar I therefore tried to add "FaceAlpha" in the "bar-command", but this is not allowed for barseries as far as I have found out. I have also tried using handles with pathces, but this doesent seem to work with this version of matlab... Does anyone have a solution on how to get transparent colors on the bars?

Answer 1

[Brendan Hamm]

Try the solution I have pasted in another post ... just last night. I have made a function which creates the patches necessary to create a transparent bar plot.

http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/213991-matlab-put-transparancy-on-a-bar-plot

[kathrigr]

Perfect! however, i had a problem with my labels when using this patch function you created(the labels come up in the plot, but the colors are not correct(all blue)). Do you know if there is a simple way of including labels in this function?

[Brendan Hamm]

I have just showed how to do this in the exact same post.

http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/213991-matlab-put-transparancy-on-a-bar-plot

Answer 2

[Thomas Koelen]

They explain how to it on this website:

http://undocumentedmatlab.com/blog/plot-markers-transparency-and-color-gradient

Only works on 2014B, well earlier versions can do it aswell but it is a lot of hassle.

[kathrigr]

Hi, thank you for the tip. But as it is a barplot, the marker handle command does not work and the following error message occurs:

No appropriate method, property, or field MarkerHandle for class matlab.graphics.chart.primitive.Bar.

Error in: hMarkers = hLine.MarkerHandle;

If i try to use only hLine.get there is not possibile to add a fourth number in the color vector:

While setting the 'FaceColor' property of Bar: Color value must be a 3 element vector

Error in: hLine.FaceColor = uint8(255*[1;0;0;0.3]);

Is there another handle that should be used instead as it is a barplot or is this solution just not suited for barplots?

[Thomas Koelen]

Try this:

B = bar(rand(1,40));
ch = get(B,'child');
set(ch,'facea',.05)

[Brendan Hamm]

The children of bar is now empty post 2014b so this will not work.

[paul harder]

now this:

https://www.mathworks.com/examples/matlab/mw/graphics-ex16932215-create-bar-chart-with-transparency