ggnewscale

ggnewscale tries to make it painless to use multiple scales in ggplot2. Although originally intended to use with colour and fill, it should work with any aes, such as shape, linetype and the rest.

ggnewscale: spend 400% more time tweaking your ggplot!

For another way of defining multiple scales, you can also try relayer.

How to install

You can install ggnewscale from CRAN with:

install.packages("ggnewscale")

Or the development version with:

# install.packages("devtools")
devtools::install_github("eliocamp/ggnewscale")

How to cite

If you use ggnewscale in a publication, I’ll be grateful if you cited it. To get the suggested citation for this (and any other R package) you can use:

citation("ggnewscale")
#> To cite ggnewscale in publications use:
#> 
#>   Campitelli E (????). _ggnewscale: Multiple Fill and Colour Scales in
#>   'ggplot2'_. doi:10.5281/zenodo.2543762
#>   <https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.2543762>, R package version 0.5.0.
#> 
#> A BibTeX entry for LaTeX users is
#> 
#>   @Manual{R-ggnewscale,
#>     title = {ggnewscale: Multiple Fill and Colour Scales in 'ggplot2'},
#>     author = {Elio Campitelli},
#>     note = {R package version 0.5.0},
#>     doi = {10.5281/zenodo.2543762},
#>   }

If you use knitr, you can automate this with

knitr::write_bib(c("ggnewscale"), "packages.bib")

And then add citations with @R-ggnewscale.

Usage

The main function is new_scale() and its aliases new_scale_color() and new_scale_fill(). When added to a plot, every geom added after them will use a different scale.

As an example, let’s overlay some measurements over a contour map of topography using the beloved volcano.

library(ggplot2)
library(ggnewscale)
# Equivalent to melt(volcano)
topography <- expand.grid(x = 1:nrow(volcano),
                          y = 1:ncol(volcano))
topography$z <- c(volcano)

# point measurements of something at a few locations
set.seed(42)
measurements <- data.frame(x = runif(30, 1, 80),
                           y = runif(30, 1, 60),
                           thing = rnorm(30))

ggplot(mapping = aes(x, y)) +
  geom_contour(data = topography, aes(z = z, color = stat(level))) +
  # Color scale for topography
  scale_color_viridis_c(option = "D") +
  # geoms below will use another color scale
  new_scale_color() +
  geom_point(data = measurements, size = 3, aes(color = thing)) +
  # Color scale applied to geoms added after new_scale_color()
  scale_color_viridis_c(option = "A")
#> Warning: `stat(level)` was deprecated in ggplot2 3.4.0.
#> ℹ Please use `after_stat(level)` instead.
#> This warning is displayed once every 8 hours.
#> Call `lifecycle::last_lifecycle_warnings()` to see where this warning was
#> generated.

If you want to create new scales for other aes, you can call new_scale with the name of the aes. For example, use

new_scale("linetype")

to add multiple linetype scales.