Using R, how to capture the bitmap of a plot?

Question

I'd like to capture the output of the following plot to a variable containing a bitmap, in R:

require(stats)
plot(sin, -pi, 2*pi) # see ?plot.function

enter image description here

Is saving it to a file fine, or do you need C# to grab the data directly e.g. using a pipe. — Paul Hiemstra, Jan 17 '13 at 20:04
For speed, I would prefer if it didn't involve writes to the hard drive (I'm generating hundreds of these plots). R.NET has excellent support for passing variables back and forth from R to .NET, so if I could capture that bitmap into a variable in R, then we would have a solution. — Contango, Jan 17 '13 at 20:06
As an aside, the reason I want to do this is that R.NET suppresses graphics output, so I want to capture this plot to a bitmap, and then display from a C# console app using WinForms. As an aside, this technique of capturing a bitmap of a plots perfectly with Mathematica. — Contango, Jan 17 '13 at 20:09
See http://stackoverflow.com/questions/7144118/how-to-save-a-plot-as-image-on-the-disk — Contango, Jan 29 '13 at 16:00

score 5 · Accepted Answer · answered Jan 17 '13 at 20:03

5

This saves a bitmap file on the harddrive:

bmp("spam.bmp")
plot(sin, -pi, 2*pi)    
dev.off()

Googling R save bitmap get's you this answer.

answered Jan 17 '13 at 20:03

Paul Hiemstra

59,984
12
142
149

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Mar 11 '19 at 04:25

Solution with magick package:

img <- magick::image_graph(width = 256, height = 256, res = 96, pointsize = 1, clip = FALSE)
plot(sin, -pi, 2*pi)
dev.off()
img
#>   format width height colorspace matte filesize density
#> 1    PNG   256    256       sRGB  TRUE        0 +72x+72
arr <- magick::image_data(img)
str(arr)
#> num [1:256, 1:256, 1:4] 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 ...

Using R, how to capture the bitmap of a plot?

2 Answers2

Linked