Get colorbar handle for a particular image

If I have several images as subplots in a figure, how, given a handle to one of the images, or its axis, do I get the handle to the corresponding colorbar? Colorbars are not axes children, so how do I programmatically determine which belongs to which?

Answer 1

[Walter Roberson]

Assuming HG2:

get( ancestor(handle, 'axes'), 'Colorbar')

Or, if you already have the axes in variable ax then

ax.Colorbar

[Matt J]

OK, that's easy. But what still puzzles me is that 'Colorbar' appears neither in the properties list nor methods list of axes objects. How did you know that it was there !?

[Walter Roberson]

I used my short routine to examine the axes properties; see https://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/1325-what-is-missing-from-matlab#comment_472496

Answer 2

[henk vang]

Somehow above answer did not work for me (R2014).

Suppose anyone is still looking: I think what you are looking for (and at least I was looking for) is something like:

if ~isappdata(gca,'ColorbarPeerHandle')
  cb = getappdata(gca,'ColorbarPeerHandle');
end

I found a similar pices of code in the subfunction find_legend in the normal function legend. So find that piece of code, and replace ''LegendPeerHandle'' with ''ColorbarPeerHandle'.