Export R plot to multiple formats

Question

Since it is possible to export R plots to PDF or PNG or SVG etc., is it also possible to export an R plot to multiple formats at once? E.g., export a plot to PDF and PNG and SVG without recalculating the plot?

I'd say not even with ggplot2. The ggplot2 and other grid solutions create a plotting program that is then passed to a print engine before being sent to a device. They will need to be "recalculated" every time they are `print`-ed. — IRTFM, Jan 06 '18 at 22:15
@ytu IINM the current answers seem to recalculate the plot for each output device? If that is the case then user 42 gave the correct answer, but in a comment. — Wouter Beek, Jan 27 '18 at 12:29
I'd say not really. If you're using `dev.copy`, according to its document, it "*copies the graphics contents of the current device to the device specified*", i.e. the plot is not recalculated, but copied. On the other hand, `sapply` is a function doing iteration at C level (you can find related discussions [here](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/28983292/is-the-apply-family-really-not-vectorized)). You may call it "recalculating", but it is typically much faster than a `for` loop for the same job. — ytu, Jan 27 '18 at 13:48

ytu · Accepted Answer · 2018-01-07T04:38:28.140

Without using ggplot2 and other packages, here are two alternative solutions.

Create a function generating a plot with specified device and sapply it

# Create pseudo-data
x <- 1:10
y <- x + rnorm(10)

# Create the function plotting with specified device
plot_in_dev <- function(device) {
  do.call(
    device,
    args = list(paste("plot", device, sep = "."))  # You may change your filename
  )
  plot(x, y)  # Your plotting code here
  dev.off()
}

wanted_devices <- c("png", "pdf", "svg")
sapply(wanted_devices, plot_in_dev)

Use the built-in function dev.copy

# With the same pseudo-data
# Plot on the screen first
plot(x, y)

# Loop over all devices and copy the plot there
for (device in wanted_devices) {
  dev.copy(
    eval(parse(text = device)),
    paste("plot", device, sep = ".")  # You may change your filename
  )
  dev.off()
}

The second method may be a little tricky because it requires non-standard evaluation. Yet it works as well. Both methods work on other plotting systems including ggplot2 simply by substituting the plot-generating codes for the plot(x, y) above - you probably need to print the ggplot object explicitly though.

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Jan 07 '18 at 01:34

Yes, absolutely! Here is the code:

library(ggplot2)
library(purrr)
data("cars")
p <- ggplot(cars, aes(speed, dist)) + geom_point()

prefix <- file.path(getwd(),'test.')

devices <- c('eps', 'ps', 'pdf', 'jpeg', 'tiff', 'png', 'bmp', 'svg', 'wmf')

walk(devices,
     ~ ggsave(filename = file.path(paste(prefix, .x)), device = .x))

Export R plot to multiple formats

2 Answers2