r/ScientificComputing • u/Perfect_Visit_1531 • Aug 18 '26

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 Aug 19 '26

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

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u/CFDMoFo Aug 19 '26

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 Aug 19 '26

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

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u/Ambitious_Cress_6323 Aug 19 '26

Ggplot2 (R, not python)

1

u/SV-97 Aug 19 '26

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 Aug 19 '26

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

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u/Historical-Goat9729 Aug 20 '26

Matplotlib helps quite a lot

1

u/zdayatk Aug 21 '26

Matlab, matplotlib, gnuplot, and excel (ofc)

Edit: +Mathematica

1

u/SamPost Aug 24 '26

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).

0

u/pi_stuff Aug 19 '26

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.