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Save Plot To Numpy Array using Matplotlib
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How to Save a Plot to a File Using Matplotlib?

Last Updated : 11 Apr, 2025
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Matplotlib is a popular Python library to create plots, charts, and graphs of different types. show() is used to plot a plot, but it doesn't save the plot to a file. In this article, we will see various methods through which a Matplotlib plot can be saved as an image file.

Methods to Save a Plot in Matplotlib

There are several ways to save plots in Matplotlib:

  1. Using savefig()
  2. Using matplotlib.pyplot.imsave()
  3. Using the Pillow Library

1. Using savefig() Method

savefig() method is the most popular way of saving plots of Matplotlib. This function enables you to save a plot in the form of a file on your local system in different formats like PNG, JPEG, SVG, etc.

In this example, we are creating our own data list, and using Matplotlib we are plotting a bar graph and saving it to the same directory. To save generated graphs in a file on a storage disk, savefig() method is used.

Python 
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt  year = ['2010', '2002', '2004', '2006', '2008'] production = [25, 15, 35, 30, 10]  # Plotting bar chart plt.bar(year, production)  # Saving the plot as a JPEG file plt.savefig("output.jpg")  # Saving the plot with additional parameters (this is optional) plt.savefig("output1.jpg", facecolor='yellow', bbox_inches="tight", pad_inches=0.3, transparent=True)

Output

saving-plot-matplotlib
plot
plot
plot

2. Using matplotlib.pyplot.imsave()

imsave() function is another method to save a plot as an image file. It’s commonly used to save 2D arrays as image files, making it especially useful for working with image data.

Python 
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt import numpy as np  # Generate random image data img = np.random.rand(100, 100)  # Save image plt.imsave('sample_image.png', img, cmap='gray')

Output

Sample_image

3. Using the Pillow Library (PIL)

In certain instances, it could be helpful to transform a Matplotlib plot into a Pillow (PIL) Image object and save it. This is specifically useful when one is dealing with image processing operations that need Pillow.

  • BytesIO: We use a BytesIO buffer to store the plot image in memory, which can then be processed by PIL.
  • fig.savefig(): Instead of converting the canvas directly to a string, we save the plot to the buffer in PNG format.
  • Image.open(): We load the image from the buffer into a PIL image object.
Python 
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt from PIL import Image import io  fig, ax = plt.subplots() ax.plot([1, 2, 3], [1, 2, 3])  # Save the plot to a BytesIO object buf = io.BytesIO() fig.savefig(buf, format='png')  # Convert the BytesIO object to a PIL Image buf.seek(0) img = Image.open(buf)  # Save the image img.save('pil_image_save.png')

Output

saving-plot
saving plot

Next Article
Save Plot To Numpy Array using Matplotlib

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Article Tags :
  • Python
  • Python-matplotlib
Practice Tags :
  • python

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