rplotggplot2legend

Control ggplot2 legend look without affecting the plot


I'm plotting lines with ggplot2 like this:

ggplot(iris, aes(Petal.Width,Petal.Length,color=Species)) + geom_line() + theme_bw()

current plot.

I find legend marks to be small so I want them to be bigger. If I change the size, lines on the plot change too:

ggplot(iris, aes(Petal.Width,Petal.Length,color=Species)) + geom_line(size=4) + theme_bw()

thick plot lines.

But I only want to see thick lines in the legend, I want lines on the plot to be thin. I tried to use legend.key.size but it changes the square of the mark, not the width of the line:

library(grid)  # for unit
ggplot(iris,aes(Petal.Width,Petal.Length,color=Species))+geom_line()+theme_bw() + theme(legend.key.size=unit(1,"cm"))

big legend keys

I also tried to use points:

ggplot(iris,aes(Petal.Width,Petal.Length,color=Species)) + geom_line() + geom_point(size=4) + theme_bw()

But of course it still affects both plot and legend:

points

I wanted to use lines for the plot and dots/points for the legend.

So I'm asking about two things:

  1. How to change width of line in the legend without changing the plot?
  2. How to draw lines in the plot, but draw points/dots/squares in the legend?

Solution

  • To change line width only in the legend you should use function guides() and then for colour = use guide_legend() with override.aes = and set linewidth =. This will override size used in plot and will use new size value just for legend.

    ggplot(iris,aes(Petal.Width,Petal.Length,color=Species))+geom_line()+theme_bw()+
           guides(colour = guide_legend(override.aes = list(linewidth = 3)))
    

    enter image description here

    To get points in legend and lines in plot workaround would be add geom_point(size=0) to ensure that points are invisible and then in guides() set linetype=0 to remove lines and size=3 to get larger points.

    ggplot(iris,aes(Petal.Width,Petal.Length,color=Species))+geom_line()+theme_bw()+
           geom_point(size=0)+
           guides(colour = guide_legend(override.aes = list(size=3,linetype=0)))
    

    enter image description here