["python","matplotlib"]
How to map number to color using matplotlib's colormap?

Consider a variable x containing a floating point number. I want to use matplotlib's colormaps to map this number to a color, but not plot anything. Basically, I want to be able to choose the colormap with mpl.cm.autumn for example, use mpl.colors.Normalize(vmin = -20, vmax = 10) to set the range, and then map x to the corresponding color. But I really don't get the documentation of mpl.cm, so if anyone could give me a hint.
It's as simple as cm.hot(0.3): import matplotlib.cm as cm print(cm.hot(0.3)) (0.8240081481370484, 0.0, 0.0, 1.0) If you also want to have the normalizer, use import matplotlib as mpl import matplotlib.cm as cm norm = mpl.colors.Normalize(vmin=-20, vmax=10) cmap = cm.hot x = 0.3 m = cm.ScalarMappable(norm=norm, cmap=cmap) print(m.to_rgba(x)) (1.0, 0.8225486412996345, 0.0, 1.0)