title: Can't remove matplotlib's padding around imshow() figure
body: <p>I'm embedding matplotlib into my PyQt4 GUI and I'm having a heck of a time. I can get the image to display but it adds a very thick padding around the content that I'd like to remove. Here's what I'm doing:</p>
  
  <pre><code>from PyQt4.QtCore import *
  from PyQt.QtGui import *
  
  import numpy as np
  
  from matplotlib.figure import Figure
  from matplotlib.backends.backend_qt4Agg import FigureCanvasQTAgg as FigureCanvas
  import matplotlib.image as mpImage
  import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
  
  class MatPlotLibImage(FigureCanvas):
      def __init__(self):
      super(MatPlotLibImage, self).__init__(self.fig)
      self.axes = self.fig.add_subplot(111)
  
      def LoadImage():
          image = mpImage.imread("myImage.png")
          imgplot = self.axes.imshow(image, interpolation="nearest")
          # plt.axis("Off") -&gt; Doesn't do anything as far as I can tell
          imgplot.axes.set_axis_off() # Gets rid of frame
          imgplot.axes.get_xaxis().set_visible(False) # Turn off x-axis
          imgplot.axes.get_yaxis().set_visible(False) # Turn off y-axis
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>If I add this widget to a QDockWidget I get the following result:</p>
  
  <p><a href="https://i.stack.imgur.com/X3yTr.png" rel="noreferrer"><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/X3yTr.png" alt="enter image description here"></a></p>
  
  <p>As you can see it renders with a large white padding around the content. I cannot seem to remove this and everything I'm turning up online is focused on removing the padding when saving the image, not displaying. Does anyone know how to remove this padding at display time? Thanks in advance.</p>