This is just a thought I had, it would be desirable to be able to select "pad_inches" separately for the top/bottom/right/left margins.

Just to clarify, I want to be able to create my figures and whatever and only at the time of saving them to disk be able to do:

figure.savefig(filename, bbox_inches = 'tight', pad_inches_top = 0.4, pad_inches_right = 0.3)

Instead of having to change the shape of the figure I'm working with or creating a new figure with the right dimensions, as the padding work in all directions at the same time. Of course it's not a critical thing but in terms of usability would be a great help.

ps. I'm not sure whether this is a good idea or whether this is the correct place to submit a feature request. Apologies in advance.