Save as PNGs. But not just regular PNGs, use the cairo device png (ggsave(..., type = "cairo-png")
, you'll need the cairoDevice
package installed). It's amazing the difference this simple step can make in image quality and (especially) font readability.
Use the font size argument to any ggplot theme
function. The defaults are good for print. For a presentation you'll need to bump it up to, e.g., theme_classic(base_size = 20)
.
Use relative font sizes (rel()
) for theme customization so that your base_size
argument propagates through.
Use the R graphics device window (or the RStudio pane or whatever) only for rough drafts. By the time you get close to a production-quality graphic, save it as a PNG and do all final adjustments based on viewing the file. To help with that, get a lightweight image viewer that will auto-update when the file changes---I've recently started using imageglass and it works fine, there are probably several other very good options too. Make the viewer window about the size of the graph in your PPT window and make sure things look sized right before putting in PPT.
Don't use default ggplot colors. For presentations you'll want colors with relatively high saturation, some of the RColorBrewer
palettes work, or the colors from the wesanderson
package.
As others have said, use ggthemes
to find a theme that works for you, and customize it to work for your presentations. For presentation figures generally, keep things clean---don't overdo gridlines or axis-break labels, move annotations from the legend to the graph where possible (use annotate()
!).
I just noticed yesterday that I've been putting up with the windows 10 photos app despite its shitty album scrolling. I've used ImageGlass in the past, open source, clean, and much more modern UI than the normal picks. Still a good amount of the features you'd want.
There's a program out there similar the in-built photo viewer, but a lot of better (features, supported formats, etc). It's called ImageGlass and it's open-source. I recommend it.