How to save figures to pdf as raster images in matplotlib

Question

I have some complex graphs made using matplotlib. Saving them to a pdf using the savefig command uses a vector format, and the pdf takes ages to open. Is there any way to save the figure to pdf as a raster image to get around this problem?

If you want to save to different format within matplotlib just use savefig("filename.png") to save to png raster. If you want to continue saving to PDF and then convert I agree with Gael to use Imagemagick — Trond Kristiansen, Apr 11 '11 at 08:34

score 20 · Accepted Answer · answered Apr 12 '11 at 16:32

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You can force individual figure elements to be rasterized like this:

text(1,1,'foobar',rasterized=True)

answered Apr 12 '11 at 16:32

Jouni K. Seppänen

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Thanks. I now add rasterized=True to the line properties for each plot and it works just fine. – geometrikal Apr 13 '11 at 01:00
Awesome! Now if only I could control the dpi of the rasterizing... It seems to ignore the dpi argument I passed to `figure()` and `savefig()`. – weronika Feb 28 '13 at 21:02
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@weronika for me it works if I first set `matplotlib.rcParams['savefig.dpi'] = 300` – Jim Garrison Oct 27 '14 at 05:07

score 3 · Answer 2 · answered Apr 10 '11 at 08:55

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Not that I know, but you can use the 'convert' program (ImageMagick') to convert a jpg to a pdf: `convert file.jpg file.pdf'.

answered Apr 10 '11 at 08:55

Gael Varoquaux

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How to save figures to pdf as raster images in matplotlib

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