Getting set up to export text correctly
If you’re exporting text, you need to make sure matplotlib
is exporting
editable text, otherwise Illustrator will treat every single character as a
shape instead of text. By default matplotlib
exports “Type 3 fonts” which
Adobe Illustrator doesn’t understand, so you need to change matplotlib to export
Type 2/TrueType fonts.
This setting is, for some reason, the number 42
. Run this once at the top of
your code and you’ll be set for everything else in the script/notebook.
If you don’t want to type this all of the time (which you shouldn’t), there is a
solution! Run the following code from the command line - it creates a
matplotlib
startup file that will run the above commands every time
matplotlib
is started. You can only do this on OS X.
mkdir -p ~/.matplotlib
echo 'pdf.fonttype: 42' >> ~/.matplotlib/matplotlibrc
echo 'ps.fonttype: 42' >> ~/.matplotlib/matplotlibrc
Reading in our data
Country | Continent | GDP_per_capita | life_expectancy | Population | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
0 | Afghanistan | Asia | 663 | 54.863 | 22856302 |
1 | Albania | Europe | 4195 | 74.200 | 3071856 |
2 | Algeria | Africa | 5098 | 68.963 | 30533827 |
3 | Angola | Africa | 2446 | 45.234 | 13926373 |
4 | Antigua and Barbuda | N. America | 12738 | 73.544 | 77656 |
Exporting
Be sure to read the section above above about exporting text.
After you make your graphic, use plt.savefig("filename.pdf")
to save it as a
vector-graphic .pdf
. Do not save as png
or jpg
or anythign else. You
could save as svg
but I’ve found pdf
generally works better.
You’ll also need to pass transparent=True
when using .savefig
to get rid of
white backgrounds. It makes your file much easier to work with in Illustrator.
Even though it’s just plt.savefig
again and again, I’ve included several
examples below.
Example 1, bar chart
Setting color='slategray'
allows you to make every bar be the same color.
plt.savefig
is the bit that saves your graph.
Example 2, scatterplot
Here I’ve passed a lot of arguments in to the .scatter
method. It’s still
plt.savefig
to save, though.
Example 3, grouped scatterplot
Setting markeredgewidth=0
allows you to easily remove the invisible borders
around the circles when in Illustrator.
But despite it being crazy complicated: plt.savefig
once again.