You can create some dummy image and then hide it’s axe. Draw your colorbar in a customize Axes.
import pylab as pl
import numpy as np
a = np.array([[0,1]])
pl.figure(figsize=(9, 1.5))
img = pl.imshow(a, cmap="Blues")
pl.gca().set_visible(False)
cax = pl.axes([0.1, 0.2, 0.8, 0.6])
pl.colorbar(orientation="h", cax=cax)
pl.savefig("colorbar.pdf")
the result:
