exportgraphics: adding a margin

Is it possible to add a margin to figures saved using the exportgraphics function?

It crops a tad too tightly for my needs.

Answer 1

[David Hasin]

Hey there, you can use 'padding' in the exportgraphics option, but it is available only in matlab online 2024a. For example:

exportgraphics(ax,"figurepadding.png","Padding","figure")

or

exportgraphics(ax,"figurepadding.png","Padding",20)

See documentation:

https://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/ref/exportgraphics.html

Answer 2

[Paul Wintz]

You can force exportgraphics to export the entire figure by drawing an white rectange around it with the command

annotation('rectangle',[0 0 1 1],'Color','w');

To adjust the margins, change the dimensions [0 0 1 1].

As noted by @David Walwark in the comments, the plot will not be interactive while it is annotated. To restore interactivity, delete the annotation after calling exportgraphics.

a = annotation('rectangle',[0 0 1 1],'Color','w');
% -> Save figure here <- 
delete(a)

[Fatemeh Sadeghihassanabadi]

Thanks @Paul Wintz, I had the same problem, this is the best solution for it.

[David Walwark]

Excellent, this really helped. If one wants the figure to remain interactive then it is best to delete the handle to that annotation after exportgraphics is called.

[Bill Tubbs]

This didn't work for me. Presumably when doing 2 subplots you need to apply this annotation to each subplot?

I tried adjusting the margins to [-0.05 -0.05 1.05 1.05] and it raises:

Error using annotation (line 116)

Position values must be between 0 and 1.

[Alexander Moody]

Had the same issue... this worked for me, but I had to change the color of the annotation rectangle to something other than white for it to work.

Answer 3

[Kiran Felix Robert]

Hi Dormant,

If you are trying to export multiple sub-images/plots onto a single figure, you can explore the tiledlayout to introduce spacing using the 'TileSpacing' Name-Value pair.

[Paul Wintz]

This doesn't answer the question. How do we adjust the margins on the outside of a figure saved with exportgraphics?

[Bill Tubbs]

This worked for me. When I did my 2-plot figure using tiledlayout instead of subplots the outer margin was significantly wider.

Answer 4

[dormant]

Many thanks to you all. I gave up on this approach as I needed to specify sizes exactly. So there's a new question here: https://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/2158290-specify-plot-box-position-for-tiled-layout?s_tid=srchtitle

Answer 5

[Andreas Sprenger]

I use the plotedit function to refrain cropping of plots (particularly with multiple subplots.

hfig = figure('WindowState', 'maximized');

plotedit(hfig);

% subsequent plotting commands

You get a tiny blue line at the outer border of the page but the cropping is gone :-)