I am coming to Python and numpy and matplotlib from a Matlab background. One function in matlab that I use all the time is imagesc. Is there an exact equivalent to this somewhere in matplotlib? I know about imshow and pcolor, but the first doesn't allow you to easily set the units of the axes like imagesc, and the second makes you set the x- and y-coordinates of the boundaries of the pixels, rather than the centers of the pixels, which I do not find intuitive. 

Basically, if I have an image that I want to display with x- and y-axis labels that are not pixel numbers but are numerical, like distance in mm, what is the easiest way to do it in matplotlib? 

Answer: 

You want the extent kwarg 

 ax.imshow(data, extent=[0, 1, 0, 1])

See Imshow: extent and aspect for a more detailed example.