Save Matplotlib figure as TIFF

Question

Does anyone know how to save a Matplotlib figure as *.tiff? It seems that this format is not supported in Python, while the journals are quite often ask for that format.

I am adding some minimal code:

# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-  from mpl_toolkits.mplot3d import Axes3D import matplotlib.pyplot as plt import numpy as np  # fig setup fig = plt.figure(figsize=(5,5), dpi=300) ax = fig.gca(projection='3d') ax.set_xlim([-1,1]) ax.set_ylim([-1,1]) ax.set_zlim([-1,1]) ax.axes.xaxis.set_ticklabels([]) ax.axes.yaxis.set_ticklabels([]) ax.axes.zaxis.set_ticklabels([])  # draw a surface xx, yy = np.meshgrid(range(-1,2), range(-1,2)) zz = np.zeros(shape=(3,3)) ax.plot_surface(xx, yy, zz, color='#c8c8c8', alpha=0.3) ax.plot_surface(xx, zz, yy, color='#b6b6ff', alpha=0.2)  # draw a point ax.scatter([0],[0],[0], color='b', s=200) 

This works:

fig.savefig('3dPlot.pdf') 

But this does not:

fig.savefig('3dPlot.tif') 

Answer 1

As a workaround, there would be nothing to stop you using the Python PIL package to save your image in TIFF format:

# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-  from mpl_toolkits.mplot3d import Axes3D import matplotlib.pyplot as plt import numpy as np  from PIL import Image import io  # fig setup fig = plt.figure(figsize=(5,5), dpi=300) ax = fig.gca(projection='3d') ax.set_xlim([-1,1]) ax.set_ylim([-1,1]) ax.set_zlim([-1,1]) ax.axes.xaxis.set_ticklabels([]) ax.axes.yaxis.set_ticklabels([]) ax.axes.zaxis.set_ticklabels([])  # draw a surface xx, yy = np.meshgrid(range(-1,2), range(-1,2)) zz = np.zeros(shape=(3,3)) ax.plot_surface(xx, yy, zz, color='#c8c8c8', alpha=0.3) ax.plot_surface(xx, zz, yy, color='#b6b6ff', alpha=0.2)  # draw a point ax.scatter([0],[0],[0], color='b', s=200)  #fig.savefig('3dPlot.pdf')  # Save the image in memory in PNG format png1 = io.BytesIO() fig.savefig(png1, format="png")  # Load this image into PIL png2 = Image.open(png1)  # Save as TIFF png2.save("3dPlot.tiff") png1.close() 

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If Python 2.x is being used, use cStringIO instead of BytesIO as follows:

import cStringIO  # Replace the BytesIO() call with png1 = cStringIO.StringIO()