17.2 With the console

# Open the file that will contain your plot (the name is up to you)
pdf(file="myplot.pdf")

# execute the plot
plot(1:10)

# Close the file that will contain the plot
dev.off()

## png 
##   2

Formats

R supports a variety of file formats for figures: pdf, png, jpeg, tiff, bmp, svg, ps.
They all come with their own function, for example:

# TIFF
tiff(file="myfile.tiff")

    plot(1:10)

dev.off()

## png 
##   2

# JPEG
jpeg(file="myfile.jpeg")

    plot(1:10)

dev.off()

## png 
##   2

# etc.

The size of the output file can be changed:

# Default: 7 inches (both width and height) for svg, pdf, ps.
svg(file="myfile.svg", width=8, height=12)

    plot(1:10)

dev.off()

## png 
##   2

# Default: 480 pixels (both width and height) for jpeg, tiff, png, bmp.
png(file="myfile.png", width=500, height=600)

    plot(1:10)

dev.off()

## png 
##   2

Note that pdf is the only format that supports saving several pages:

pdf(file="myfile_pages.pdf")

    plot(1:10)
    plot(2:20)

dev.off()

## png 
##   2

Plot several figures in one page

You can output more than one plot per page using the par() function (sets graphical parameters) and the mfrow argument.

jpeg(file="myfile_multi.jpeg")

# organize the plot in 1 row and 2 columns:
    # nr: number of rows
    # nc: number of columns
par(mfrow=c(nr=1, nc=2))

    plot(1:10)
    plot(2:20)

dev.off()

## png 
##   2

jpeg(file="myfile_multi4.jpeg")

# organize the plot in 2 rows and 2 columns
par(mfrow=c(nr=2, nc=2))

# top-left
plot(1:10)
# top-right
barplot(table(rep(c("A","B"), c(2,3))))
# bottom-left
pie(table(rep(c("A","B"), c(2,3))))
# bottom-right
hist(rnorm(2000))

dev.off()

## png 
##   2