Save a plot with publication-ready defaults — save_paper

Saves a ggplot with sizes matching common two-column conference/journal layouts (e.g., ACM): a single-column figure is 3.33 in wide, a full-width figure 7 in. On Windows and Linux, PDFs are rendered with grDevices::cairo_pdf so that fonts are embedded and unicode glyphs survive; on macOS the default pdf device is used instead, because R's cairo on macOS is known to crash some setups (e.g., GitHub Actions runners) and the macOS device handles fonts well on its own.

Usage

save_paper_figure(
  plot = ggplot2::last_plot(),
  filename,
  columns = 1,
  width = NULL,
  height = NULL,
  base_size = NULL,
  dpi = 300,
  device = NULL
)

Arguments

plot: The plot to save (defaults to the last plot displayed).
filename: Output path; the extension selects the device (.pdf is recommended for LaTeX).
columns: 1 for a single-column figure, 2 for a full-width figure. Ignored when width is given.
width: Figure width in inches; overrides columns.
height: Figure height in inches. Defaults to 2/3 of the width.
base_size: Base font size in points for the saved figure, applied via colley_theme() sizing on top of whatever theme the plot carries. The default NULL derives it from width, so a 3.33 in figure gets about 7 pt and a 7 in figure about 9 pt – close to the body text of a typical two-column paper, which is what makes a figure legible at 100\ rather than only when zoomed. Pass a number to choose it yourself, or NA to leave the plot's own text sizes untouched.
dpi: Resolution for raster output. Default 300.
device: Graphics device passed to ggplot2::ggsave(). The default NULL selects it automatically as described above; pass e.g. grDevices::cairo_pdf explicitly to override.

Value

Invisibly returns filename.

Examples

# \donttest{
p <- ggplot2::ggplot(mtcars, ggplot2::aes(factor(cyl), mpg)) +
  ggplot2::geom_boxplot()
save_paper_figure(p, file.path(tempdir(), "cyl-mpg.pdf"), columns = 1)
#> Saved figure to '/tmp/RtmpOITswE/cyl-mpg.pdf' (3.33 x 2.22 in, base font 7 pt).
# }