ggplot2 ggsave: keep embedded fonts in exported .png

Question

Numerous people have had the issue where a custom font shows up in the ggplot but disappears upon export using ggsave, but I've only ever found solutions to this for exporting pdfs (e.g. ggplot embedded fonts in pdf). I'm trying to export as png. This has previously worked fine for me, so not sure what's going on.

Just updated everything, which didn't fix the issue - R is version 3.5.0; RStudio is 1.1.453; on macOS Sierra.

Both of these work to add the font to the plot:

1:

if (!require(showtext)) {
  install.packages("showtext", repos = "http://cran.utstat.utoronto.ca/")
  require(showtext)
}
font_add_google("Karla", "karla") # Add nice google font
showtext_auto() # Tell R to use showtext to render google font

2:

if (!require(extrafont)) {
  install.packages("extrafont", repos = "http://cran.utstat.utoronto.ca/")
  require(extrafont)
}
font_import(pattern = "Karla")

How I'm plotting it:

theme_map <- function(...) {
  theme_minimal() +
    theme(
      text = element_text(family = "Karla", color = "#22211d"),
      panel.grid.minor = element_blank(),
      panel.grid.major = element_blank(),
      plot.background = element_rect(fill = "#f5f5f2", color = NA), 
      panel.background = element_rect(fill = "#f5f5f2", color = NA), 
      legend.background = element_rect(fill = "#f5f5f2", color = NA),
      panel.border = element_blank(), # infuriatingly doesn't work but that's unrelated
      aspect.ratio = 9 / 16, # 16:9 aspect ratio
      ...
    )
}

data(iris)

p <- ggplot() + geom_point(data=iris, aes(x=iris$Sepal.Length, y=iris$Sepal.Width)) + labs(title="Font Pls") + theme_map()

plot(p)

ggsave("iris.png", p, device="png")
ggsave("iris.png", p, device="png", type="cairo") # does not produce an error but also doesn't produce a .png file
ggsave("iris.png", p, device="cairo-png") # also does not produce an error but also doesn't produce a .png file

What I see in RStudio (and want to save):

What gets saved using ggsave: This is what is spit out using ggsave, even with solutions provided elsewhere like type = "cairo-png" or type = "cairo". (Adding either of those just gives an error, doesn't save the plot at all.) Not sure if it's related (though it probably is), but ggsave also appears to be ignoring the text sizes and italics for the title, axes, etc.

I'm happy to use a non-ggsave solution if it's out there. I have hundreds of images I need to export in this format so "export it as a pdf then save as a png" is not an option.

What exactly is the code where you call `ggsave`? – camille May 28 '18 at 02:21 — camille, May 28 '18 at 02:21

score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered Sep 21 '18 at 22:54

Definitely not a full answer, but I've been able to fix this issue by restarting R, then loading only the ggplot2 and scales libraries I need for my plot, plotting, and saving. So there is some other package that I'm using that is interfering with ggsave.

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Jan 11 '22 at 23:04

I found that the png output works with showfont if I also install the font in question in my system. So for example, calling showfont_auto() would plot the font correctly in the r plot display, but saving as png would not render. However, if I installed the font on my computer, it would then successfully add the font to the png (without having to do any difficult things like updating a font directory to R or things like that, only font_add_google("fontname") if it's a font from google fonts for example)

ggplot2 ggsave: keep embedded fonts in exported .png

2 Answers2