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Overview

The Label command controls how PyMOL draws text labels for PyMOL objects. Labeling is important so there are many options for your fine tuning needs. You can change the label size, label color, positioning, font, the label outline color that masks the font and much, much more.

You can have PyMOL label atoms by properties or arbitrary strings as you want; you can even use Unicode fonts for special symbols like, $\alpha ,\beta ,\pm ,{\textrm {\mathrm {\AA} }}$ , etc.

The following gallery shows some examples of how extensible the Label command is.

Simple label
Example showing usage of Unicode fonts for special characters
Another example with Unicode fonts
Example label
Label shadows turned off
Label shadows turned on

Object Properties

Aside from arbitrary string labels, like "This is the catalytic residue" for an atom/residue you can also use the following built-in molecular properties:

name, the atom name
resn, the residue name
resi, the residue number/identifier
chain, the chain name
q, charge
b, the occupancy/b-factor
segi, the segment identifier
type (ATOM,HETATM), the type of atom
formal_charge, the formal charge
partial_charge, the partial charge
numeric_type, the numeric type
text_type, the text type

Syntax

To use the label command follow this syntax:

# labeling syntax
label [ selection[, expression]]

where selection is some object/selection you want to label and expression is some string (or set of strings) which PyMOL is to use to label the given selection.

We have plenty of examples. See the examples below.