Plotting (and saving) a figure with a black background

Hi again,

I have another plotting question; I have 4 subplots and I want one of them to have a black background. Since I only want one to have the black background I can't use colordef.

I have tried:

set(subplot(vertical,horizontal,figure_name),'Color','k')

and:

set(gca,'color','black')

These both work to colour the subplot in the figure window but when I save the figure (as a .png) the saved subplot has a white background. I have also tried plotting a massive black patch that covers the plot area - but this also gets missed or overwritten when saving the figure!

If there are any other commands/ways to change the background colour I would love to know them.

As always any help is greatly appreciated.

Rod.

Answer 1

[Image Analyst]

You accepted the wrong answer. There is a way to do it. this works just fine:

subplot(2,2,1);
subplot(2,2,2);
subplot(2,2,3);
subplot(2,2,4);
set(gca,'color','black')
export_fig('yourfigure.png');

export_fig() is available here: http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/ It's the most downloaded File Exchange submission ever, for a reason.

[Right Grievous]

You are right Image Analyst, this does work with export-fig - at least with a simple plot function. My original use was with patches and bar which I guess this will also work with. The funny thing is I was using export-fig when I was trying to get a black background... I'm not sure why it wasn't working.

I left the question up for a long time and got no answers so I was just trying to tidy things up a bit. Thank you for the help!

[Krystian]

set(gca,'color','k') works as long you don't use axis off :(

Answer 2

[James Heagy]

While export_fig will do the job, I find that the default settings are not always ideal. If you wanted a plot with white dots on a black background you can simply do this:

h=figure(1);

plot(x,y,'w.');

set(gca,'color',[0 0 0])

set(h,'InvertHardcopy','off')

print(h,figfname,'-dtiffn');

I use -dtiffn to get a super high-res plot, then I generally open the file in Preview (on the Mac - not sure what to use on other platforms) and export the plot as a jpg.

The result from export_fig(figfname,'-tif'), by comparison, is unacceptable for publication, IMHO.

[Image Analyst]

Now you can use the built-in exportgraphics() for almost every situation.