Retain zoom by rectangle selection when saving the matplotlib figure - python-3.x

I have a program that plots a time series data.
The plot I have after program executes is crisp and can be zoomed in onto any resolution without any problems.
However, as soon as I save the matplotlib figure as a pdf or svg file, I lose the capability to zoom by rectangular selection.
Is there any way to save the matplotlib fig so that I retain the original resolution to the fullest.
Attached are figures to help you guys understand the problem.
Notice how in the original matplotlib figure object as I keep zooming in the time stamps become visible
but when I save it as a pdf or scalable vector graphics file it does not show the timestamps clearly no matter how much I zoom.
I have named the figures such so as to easily understand what each depicts.
Original matplotlib plot which is zoomed:
Original matplotlib figure object:
The zoomed in fig when saved as a pdf:

Related

Plotting glitch with matplotlib [python3]? - EDITED

I have some issues plotting "large" datasets of timeseries data in python, where the time jumps across a few decades in erroneous samples. We aim to visualise only the timestamp (unixtime + custom microseconds) vs index. In this example there are roughly 40k samples.
Basically, I am assuming it is some issue with the rendering of the plot by matplotlib, because when I move the axes, both the scatter points and also the lineplot seem to glitch all over the place. A further bit of evidence for this is that the line in the lineplot is not actually going through the markers, when I zoom in or pan the plot.
The timestamps are continuous and increase by 40ms between steps.
Overview of errors (timestamp is zero -> default date 1.1.1970)
Zoomed in on y axis
More zoomed in
Example of how the plot should look like
Timestamp raw data (ignore ms fraction 2)
Code used to plot (using google colab, re-created in Visual Studio Code)
if single_file_or_multiple == "multiple":
fig = px.line(df_trace, x=df_trace.index, y="time", markers=True,
color="rec_id")
fig.show()

Matplotlib: consistent image size for publications

I want to make publication-quality plots with Matplotlib. The biggest problem I am having right now is to tune the image and font sizes.
When I create a figure with several panels, I usually set a bigger figsize. For example, these three panels are created with a figsize=(12, 6 / 1.618) (pasted from Jupyter Lab, I always save to PDF files).
The lines can be perfectly seen, there is a lot of space, the figure seems nice. The problem is that in my publication this has to be a column-wise figure, so it has to be scaled down. A colum has a width of around ~3.5 inches. When the image is resized, it still looks good, but the axes labels become very tiny and unreadable. Of course, I can just simply start increasing the font sizes until I find a good size, but I would like to have a workflow that allows me to work with the lengths and sizes I have to use.
When I set the image size to figsize=(columnw, 0.5*columnw / 1.618) (so the aspect ratio is the same) as before, and set the font size around 10 (the font size of my publication) this is what I get:
So now the fonts are exactly the size I want them to be, the figure does not have to be reescaled, but the contents of the graph seem to be compressed into a very very tiny space. It just look... ugly.
Then, my question is: why using a big figsize with extremely large fontsizes gives a beautiful, readable figure when scaled, but with the a priori correct figsize without rescaling seems to be ugly? How could I work with real figsizes from the very beginning to obtain something nice?
I read some questions regarding image size with Matplotlib on this site, as well as a pair of blog posts, but I haven't found any information regarding this problem.
Thank you in advance.

Contour plot with labels using the Visit plotting software and data set in vtk format

I am trying to make a contour plot labels in Visit. The initial file format I am using is VTK. The data is on a regular spaced rectangular grid
Visit offer a contour option, however it is not possible to add any labels.
My idea is to make a contour plot, use the cut operator and create a 2D slice that looks something like this :
I know how to use the pseudo color option and overlay the contour curves, however I have no idea how to put labels on the curves. This is a standard graph type and I am assuming that this should be possible.
I tried using a label plot, but this does not solve the problem.
I was reading online that python can plot VTK data, however, I have no experience with this python library.

Reducing the size of pdf figure file in matplotlib

In matplotlib, I am using LineCollection to draw and color the countries, where the boundaries of the counties are given. When I am saving the figure as a pdf file:
fig.savefig('filename.pdf',dpi=300)
the figure size are quite big. However, on saving them as png file:
fig.savefig('filename.png',dpi=300)
and then converting them to pdf using linux convert command the files are small. I tried reducing the dpi, however that do not change the pdf file size. Is there a way the figures can be saved directly as smaller-pdf files from matplotlib?
The PDF is larger, since it contains all the vector information. By saving a PNG, you produce a rasterized image. It seems that in your case, you can produce a smaller PDF by rasterizing the plot directly:
plt.plot(x, y, 'r-', rasterized=True)
Here, x, y are some plot coordinates. You basically have to use the additionally keyword argument raterized to achieve the effect.
I think using "rasterized = True" effectively saves the image similarly to png format. When you zoom in, you will see blurring pixels.
If you want the figures to be high quality, my suggestion is to sample from the data and make a plot. The pdf file size is roughly the amount of data points it need to remember.

2D image rotation, few issues

I'm adding "mouse rotation" to my 2D drawing program. I've got all the code working, by basically calculating the rotation angle from the original mouse click to wherever the mouse currently is.
I also draw a transparent rectangle that rotates, instead of actually rotating the image on every mouse movement event.
Now, my problem is the drawing of this rectangle. I draw the rectangle from the image's x/y position, with its width/height being what the image reports.
However, after rotating a rectangular image, its new width and height is much bigger, as these two screenshots should help clarify: During rotation, and after rotating then rotating again -- the little "handles" show where the images' x/y/width/height extends to
In the second screenshot, because of the rotation, the image has been padded, sort of with whitespace (it's hard to describe with text!). E.g. an image that's 200x100 can end up like 150x150 (approximately) after rotating, which looks a bit strange when resizing the 2nd time.
Does anyone have an idea how to fix this?
As a rule of thumb, never rotate/resize a previously rotated image as the small errors will start creeping in.
Generally, it is easier to keep a copy of the original image and base ALL changes off that image.
For example, the first rotate is 5 degrees. The second rotate is 15 degrees. To render the second image, rotate the original copy 20 degrees and display that.
Not sure if that helps or if I have misread your question.
You should probably keep track of the image's current rotation, so that you can re-draw the rectangle around the image at its current rotation. If you are going to need to rotate more than 1 thing, you will have to keep track of layers, and the rotation of each one.
You'll need to store the original dimensions of the image and the current angle of rotation so that you can effectively back out the rotations correctly. Also, you'll need to save the original image data.
What's happening now is that your program loses the information about the original image size, so it uses what it sees (correctly). What you want is a fresh redraw from the original image data, just with a different rotation.

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