ggplot2: ggsave – R documentation

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ggsave

Save a ggplot (or other grid object) with sensible defaults

Description

ggsave() is a convenient function for saving a plot. It defaults to saving the last plot that you displayed, using the size of the current graphics device. It also guesses the type of graphics device from the extension.

Usage

ggsave(
  filename,
  plot = last_plot(),
  device = NULL,
  path = NULL,
  scale = 1,
  width = NA,
  height = NA,
  units = c("in", "cm", "mm"),
  dpi = 300,
  limitsize = TRUE,
  ...
)

Arguments

`filename`	File name to create on disk.
`plot`	Plot to save, defaults to last plot displayed.
`device`	Device to use. Can either be a device function (e.g. `png()`), or one of "eps", "ps", "tex" (pictex), "pdf", "jpeg", "tiff", "png", "bmp", "svg" or "wmf" (windows only).
`path`	Path of the directory to save plot to: `path` and `filename` are combined to create the fully qualified file name. Defaults to the working directory.
`scale`	Multiplicative scaling factor.
`width, height, units`	Plot size in `units` ("in", "cm", or "mm"). If not supplied, uses the size of current graphics device.
`dpi`	Plot resolution. Also accepts a string input: "retina" (320), "print" (300), or "screen" (72). Applies only to raster output types.
`limitsize`	When `TRUE` (the default), `ggsave` will not save images larger than 50x50 inches, to prevent the common error of specifying dimensions in pixels.
`...`	Other arguments passed on to the graphics device function, as specified by `device`.

Details

Note: Filenames with page numbers can be generated by including a C integer format expression, such as %03d (as in the default file name for most R graphics devices, see e.g. png()). Thus, filename = "figure%03d.png" will produce successive filenames figure001.png, figure002.png, figure003.png, etc. To write a filename containing the % sign, use %%. For example, filename = "figure-100%%.png" will produce the filename figure-100%.png.

Saving images without ggsave()

In most cases ggsave() is the simplest way to save your plot, but sometimes you may wish to save the plot by writing directly to a graphics device. To do this, you can open a regular R graphics device such as png() or pdf(), print the plot, and then close the device using dev.off(). This technique is illustrated in the examples section.

Examples

## Not run: 
ggplot(mtcars, aes(mpg, wt)) + geom_point()

ggsave("mtcars.pdf")
ggsave("mtcars.png")

ggsave("mtcars.pdf", width = 4, height = 4)
ggsave("mtcars.pdf", width = 20, height = 20, units = "cm")

# delete files with base::unlink()
unlink("mtcars.pdf")
unlink("mtcars.png")

# specify device when saving to a file with unknown extension
# (for example a server supplied temporary file)
file <- tempfile()
ggsave(file, device = "pdf")
unlink(file)

# save plot to file without using ggsave
p <- ggplot(mtcars, aes(mpg, wt)) + geom_point()
png("mtcars.png")
print(p)
dev.off()


## End(Not run)

ggplot2

Create Elegant Data Visualisations Using the Grammar of Graphics

v3.3.3

MIT + file LICENSE

Authors

Hadley Wickham [aut] (<https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4757-117X>), Winston Chang [aut] (<https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1576-2126>), Lionel Henry [aut], Thomas Lin Pedersen [aut, cre] (<https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5147-4711>), Kohske Takahashi [aut], Claus Wilke [aut] (<https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7470-9261>), Kara Woo [aut] (<https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5125-4188>), Hiroaki Yutani [aut] (<https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3385-7233>), Dewey Dunnington [aut] (<https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9415-4582>), RStudio [cph, fnd]

Initial release