Save a plot as image on the disk using R

Question

I have plotted a simple regression plot using R. Now, I want to save that plot as a PNG or JPEG.

Is it possible to do it automatically via code

So I'm looking for an answer in 2 situations:

1.In a situation where I'm already looking at my lot on my PC and would just want to save it.

2.In a situation where I still have to generate the plot and would directly like to save it while I execute my plotting code.

Answer 1

Consider for both the situations:

1. Image will be generated in future in my R script. So, how do I save it to disk?

To save your required plot, you need to do the following:

1. Open a device, using png(), bmp(), pdf() or similar
2. Plot your model
3. Close the device using dev.off()

Below is the example code for saving the plot in png format

required_fit <- lm(some ~ model)

png(filename="your/file/location/name.png")
plot(required_fit)
dev.off()

All these are described in the help page. To know about the formats, you just have to type ?pdf, ?png ,?jpeg

NOTE:

a.The image might look different on disk to the same plot directly plotted to your screen.

b.If your plot is made by either lattice or ggplot2 you have to  print the plot.

2 . The plot is already plotted and I just want to copy it as it is to a disk .

dev.print(pdf, 'filename.pdf')

The above command  should copy the image.

For any other formats, you can, replace pdf with other file types such as png, jpeg etc.