reportfig is a lightweight R package designed to streamline the workflow of rendering plots in Quarto documents while simultaneously exporting them to high-quality files (defaulting to PDF).

• Universal Compatibility: Works seamlessly with any R plotting system:
  • Base R: plot(), hist(), etc.
  • ggplot2: Full support for ggplot objects and patchwork.
  • Lattice: Support for trellis objects.
  • ComplexHeatmap: Explicit support for Heatmap and HeatmapList.
  • pheatmap: Support for gtable outputs.
  • Grid: Support for any grob or gtable object.
• Quarto & RMarkdown Optimized: Renders the plot in the current output (HTML/PDF) while creating a sidecar file.
• Zero-Config inside Quarto: Automatically detects chunk labels as filenames.
• Global Configuration: Set package-wide defaults using R options.
• Default PDF Export: One-step PDF generation with professional defaults (7x7", 300 DPI for rasters).
• Multi-format Support: Easily export to png, svg, jpeg, or tiff via the devices argument.
• Output Management: Specify a centralized output_dir for all figures.

You can install the development version of reportfig from GitHub:

# install.packages("devtools") devtools::install_github("MLKaufman/reportfig")

reportfig(plot_expr, # plot object or expression to render filename = NULL, # base filename (inherited from knitr if NULL) width = getOption("reportfig.width", 7), height = getOption("reportfig.height", 7), devices = getOption("reportfig.devices", "pdf"), output_dir = getOption("reportfig.output_dir", NULL), res = getOption("reportfig.res", 300), ...)

library(reportfig) reportfig(plot(1:10, main="Base R Example"), "my_plot")

library(ggplot2) p <- ggplot(mtcars, aes(wt, mpg)) + geom_point() reportfig(p, "ggplot_export")

library(ComplexHeatmap) mat <- matrix(rnorm(100), 10) h <- Heatmap(mat) reportfig(h, "heatmap_export")

If you are using Quarto or RMarkdown, reportfig will automatically use the chunk label as the filename if filename is omitted:

#| label: fig-my-analysis #| fig-cap: "Analysis results" reportfig(ggplot(mtcars, aes(wt, mpg)) + geom_point()) # This saves 'fig-my-analysis.pdf' automatically

You can set project-wide defaults in your .Rprofile:

options( reportfig.output_dir = "figures/exports", reportfig.devices = c("pdf", "png"), reportfig.width = 10, reportfig.height = 6 )

# Override defaults for a specific plot reportfig(p, "fine_plot", width = 12, height = 4, devices = "tiff", res = 600)

In a Quarto workflow, you often want a plot to look good in the rendered report but also need a high-quality PDF version for a manuscript or presentation. reportfig eliminates the need for redundant code like:

# The manual way p <- ggplot(mtcars, aes(wt, mpg)) + geom_point() p ggsave("plot.pdf", p)

With reportfig, it becomes a single, clean call that handles the rendering logic for you regardless of the plotting library used, and keeps your project organized by managing export paths and labels automatically.