Saving figures in Python

The format follows the extension; dpi and bbox decide the rest.

import matplotlib

matplotlib.use("Agg")
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

figure, axes = plt.subplots(figsize=(4, 2.5))
axes.plot([1, 2, 3], [3, 1, 2])
axes.set_title("saved three ways")

figure.savefig("plot.png", dpi=200, bbox_inches="tight")
figure.savefig("plot.svg")
figure.savefig("plot.pdf", transparent=True)
plt.close(figure)
print(plt.get_fignums())

How it works

bbox_inches=\u0022tight\u0022 crops the whitespace away.
transparent=True drops the background for slides.
Close the figure when you are done, or memory grows.

Keywords and builtins used here

as
print

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Step 4 of 4 in Figures & axes, step 4 of 14 in Plotting with matplotlib.

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