How do you style Matplotlib figures and save them for reports?

The default Matplotlib style is functional but plain. For presentations and reports you need publication-quality output — chosen colour palettes, correct font sizes, no chart junk, and lossless or high-resolution raster output.

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import numpy as np

# --- Using a style sheet ---
plt.style.use('seaborn-v0_8-whitegrid')  # clean grid background
# Other useful styles: 'ggplot', 'fivethirtyeight', 'bmh', 'dark_background'
print(plt.style.available)   # list all available styles

# --- Common appearance tweaks via rcParams ---
plt.rcParams.update({
    'font.size':        12,
    'axes.labelsize':   13,
    'axes.titlesize':   14,
    'legend.fontsize':  11,
    'figure.dpi':       100,
    'lines.linewidth':  2,
})

# --- Figure construction ---
fig, ax = plt.subplots(figsize=(8, 5))
x = np.linspace(0, 10, 200)
ax.plot(x, np.sin(x), color='#2E86AB', label='sin(x)')
ax.fill_between(x, np.sin(x), 0, alpha=0.15, color='#2E86AB')
ax.axhline(0, color='black', linewidth=0.8, linestyle='--')
ax.set_title('Sine Wave with Fill', pad=12)
ax.set_xlabel('x')
ax.set_ylabel('sin(x)')
ax.legend(loc='upper right')
ax.spines[['top', 'right']].set_visible(False)  # remove chart junk
fig.tight_layout()

# --- Saving ---
fig.savefig('output.png', dpi=300, bbox_inches='tight')  # raster
fig.savefig('output.pdf', bbox_inches='tight')            # vector
fig.savefig('output.svg', bbox_inches='tight')            # web/edit

Use bbox_inches='tight' whenever saving — it prevents axis labels being clipped at the edges. For publications use PDF or SVG (vector formats that scale without pixelation). For web and slides, PNG at 150–300 DPI is standard.

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