[FIXED] Any way to make matplotlib's Nbagg backend faster, or Inline backend higher resolution?

Issue

I love using Jupyter notebooks, but can't seem to find the correct backend for visualizing plots: %matplotlib inline generates really low-resolution, bitmap images, but fast, and %matplotlib nbagg or %matplotlib notebook are slow, but high-resolution vector graphics.

Could the latter be slow because it has to set up the interaction interface? I generally want all my figures to be reproducible with the click of a button so I don't want to manually manipulate them -- maybe I can disable interaction for every plot?

Or could the former be adjusted to show figures in higher-resolution, or to load up vector graphics instead of the bitmap images?

Solution

As often happens, I found the answer right after posting the question. Just use

%config InlineBackend.figure_format = 'retina'
%matplotlib inline

for high-resolution bitmap, or for vector graphics,

%config InlineBackend.figure_format = 'svg'
%matplotlib inline

and that does the trick!

Also figured out how to make the backend preserve the printed-figure bounding box even if Artists go outside -- just use

%config InlineBackend.print_figure_kwargs = {}

because by default, its value is {'bbox_inches': 'tight'}. Could not find any documentation on this, but jupyter displays the different options if you enter %config InlineBackend.

Answered By - Luke Davis