Getting Started with ggsaveR

Introduction

The ggsaveR package is designed to supercharge ggplot2::ggsave() without requiring you to change your existing code. This vignette will walk you through the simplest, most common use case: making ggsave() better with a single line of code.

The Problem

Imagine you have an analysis script that saves several plots.

library(ggplot2)

# Create a plot
p <- ggplot(mtcars, aes(mpg, wt)) +
  geom_point() +
  labs(title = "Fuel Efficiency vs. Weight")

# Save the plot
# In a real script, you might save this in a 'figures' directory
# ggsave("figures/mpg_vs_wt.png", p)

If you want to change how the plot is saved—for example, to add a PDF version for a publication—you would normally have to find and modify every ggsave() call.

The ggsaveR Solution

With ggsaveR, you can set global options to control the behavior of all subsequent ggsave() calls.

First, load the ggsaveR library.

library(ggsaveR)
#> 
#> Attaching package: 'ggsaveR'
#> The following object is masked from 'package:ggplot2':
#> 
#>     ggsave

Now, let’s say you want every plot to be saved as both a PNG and a PDF. You can set the ggsaveR.formats option at the top of your script.

options(ggsaveR.formats = list(
  list(device = "png", dpi = 300),
  list(device = "pdf")
))

Now, when you call ggsave(), it will automatically save to both formats. The file extension in the filename argument is used as the base name.

# This single call will create both "mpg_vs_wt.png" and "mpg_vs_wt.pdf"
ggsave("mpg_vs_wt.png", p)

This simple setup allows you to enhance all plot-saving operations in an existing project by adding just two lines of code to the top of your script.

To clean up, you can reset the option to NULL.

options(ggsaveR.formats = NULL)

This vignette has shown the most basic feature of ggsaveR. The other vignettes in this series will explore more advanced capabilities.