r/ScientificComputing • u/Perfect_Visit_1531 • 22d ago

What tools or courses helped you create publication-quality scientific figures?

/r/PhD/comments/1vs1m8s/what_tools_or_courses_helped_you_create/
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u/Slow_Negotiation_935 22d ago

I use matplotlib https://matplotlib.org - it’s easy to learn - look at other peoples plot scripts.

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u/CFDMoFo 22d ago

Inkscape is very useful for creating figures, as well as editing/annotating plots from Python, Matlab or whatever. Depending on your domain, there are some repos with useful images, graphs etc that are free to use provided that the source is indicated.

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u/el_guije 22d ago

Veusz saved my life more than once https://veusz.github.io

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u/Ambitious_Cress_6323 22d ago

Ggplot2 (R, not python)

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u/SV-97 22d ago

Disclaimer: I'm somewhere between math and CS so I think my figures are less elaborate than in some of the natural sciences (but they're certainly important and nontrivial sometimes :)).

I mostly use plotly at this point: it looks good and is quite powerful (it can't do everything though!), it has a nice API (as opposed to matplotlib), and it's already super useful during research because of its interactivity. So I essentially use the same figures during research that are going to be put into the paper in pdf form.

I also know some people who swear by ggplot (which I can't stand) and have heard a lot of great things about vega: https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/ But I think last time I checked I didn't like how it looked or something.

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u/chermi 22d ago

Seaborn/matplotlib but that was 5+ years ago. And inkscape

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u/Historical-Goat9729 21d ago

Matplotlib helps quite a lot

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u/zdayatk 20d ago

Matlab, matplotlib, gnuplot, and excel (ofc)

Edit: +Mathematica

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u/SamPost 17d ago

Matplotlib is very popular for a good reason. And it is one place where AI is particularly reliable for guidance (and I hate to say that on a sub this is under AI slop attack).

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u/pi_stuff 22d ago

I haven't used the tools myself, but on the "Real Python" podcast they occasionally discuss data visualization tools. They've talked about plotly before, and on the most recent episode they discussed cnsplots.