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How to export a plot (or graph) together with its legend?

Rene Samson, None
Posted 10 years ago

Dear Mathematica folks,

Who can help me with the following trivial but irritating little problem?

If I make plots in Mathematica, it's straightforward to save and export the plot to another document. However ... if there's a legend attached to the plot, the straightforward "saving" operation in the Mathematica notebook selects only the plot and not the legend. There must be a simple way of locking the legend to the plot so that the "export" operation works on both jointly, but I haven't been to figure out how to do that.

Who can help me?

Thanks in advance, René Samson
POSTED BY: Rene Samson
5 Replies
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Hadi Tokme
Hadi Tokme
Posted 10 years ago

Tnx David....So nice!
POSTED BY: Hadi Tokme
David Keith
David Keith
Posted 10 years ago

I also find that with Version 10.3 on Windows you can select the cell containing the graphic, right-click, and choose "Save Selection As" to save a graphic which will include the legend:

enter image description here

The saved png is:

enter image description here
POSTED BY: David Keith
Rene Samson
Rene Samson, None
Posted 10 years ago

David's suggestion was the easiest and fastest solution for me. Thanks a heap. René Samson
POSTED BY: Rene Samson
David Keith
David Keith
Posted 10 years ago

I find that when using legends created by PlotLegends, selecting the graphic and then using "Save graphic as" does not include the legend, apparently because the legend graphic is not selectable. However, assigning the graphic to a variable and using export does include the legend. For example:

p1 = Plot[{Sin[x], Cos[x]}, {x, 0, 2 Pi}, 
   PlotLegends -> "Expressions"];

Export["exportP1.png", p1]

will save p1 as a png and it will include the legend.

I'm on 10.0.2 and Win 7 x64.
POSTED BY: David Keith

Are you used Legended or something similar? Some of the legend functions put the legend inside the same graphics as the plot and some don't. Mathematica graphics are a kind of vector graphics. A simple workaround for many unintuitive graphics problems like this is to rasterize them into an image.

Try wrapping Rasterize[....] around the result or around the commmand producing the plot.

If they're separate graphics and you'd like to not rasterize them, try putting them into a list and combining them with GraphicsRow.
POSTED BY: Sean Clarke
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