Figure Export (Publication-Grade SVG/PNG)#
Cellucid’s Figure Export tools help you turn an interactive view into a shareable, publication-grade artifact:
vector (.svg) and raster (.png) outputs that preserve key state (camera, visibility, color-by, legends) and can be used outside the web app.
These pages are written for mixed audiences:
Wet lab / non-technical: click-by-click workflows and “what success looks like”.
Computational users: format choices, performance implications, reproducibility and provenance.
Power users / developers: implementation notes, limitations, and debugging playbooks.
Tip
If you just need a good-looking figure quickly, start with Export UI walkthrough, then skim Quality knobs and best practices.
Fast path (pick your goal)#
You want to… |
Start with |
Why |
Then read |
|---|---|---|---|
Export something for slides fast |
Minimal decisions, good defaults |
||
Choose the right SVG/PNG mode |
Understand tradeoffs |
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Make a figure you can reproduce later |
Know what’s guaranteed |
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Debug “export looks wrong / too big / fails” |
Symptom → diagnosis → fix |
What Figure Export captures (quick)#
Figure export is designed to be WYSIWYG: it snapshots the current view state at export time and renders an artifact you can use outside the app.
In typical usage, exports include:
The active view (live view or the focused snapshot)
If you enable “Export all views (split-view)”, exports include the full grid (live + snapshots) as a multi-panel figure.Camera + dimension (1D/2D/3D) so the exported framing matches what you curated.
Visibility (filters and hide/show state): invisible points are not exported.
Color-by + legend mapping sourced from the same legend model used by the viewer.
Point appearance based on the current viewer render state:
PNG exports use shader-accurate rendering (so 3D “spheres” match what you see).
Hybrid SVG exports rasterize points but keep annotations vector.
Annotations you choose: title, axes, legend, 3D orientation indicator.
Overlays tied to the view buffers such as highlights (rings) and centroid overlays (if enabled in the viewer).
Important
Figure export settings are intentionally not persisted in session bundles. If you want to reproduce a specific export later, record the export settings (or rely on embedded metadata; see Metadata and provenance).
What Figure Export does not capture (quick)#
Some things are intentionally not exported:
Connectivity/edges overlay (if enabled in the viewer, export currently includes points only).
Transient UI: tooltips, hover labels, toasts, selection lasso UI, etc.
Byte-for-byte identical files across exports: exports include timestamps and embedded metadata, and SVG rendering can vary by font availability.
Output size and DPI (important for PNG)#
Cellucid treats Plot size as the size of the plot content area.
The exported file can be larger than your plot size because legend/axes/title are placed around the plot (without shrinking the plot).
For PNG, DPI scales the final pixel dimensions:
output_pixels ≈ plot_pixels × (DPI / 96) (plus extra for legend/axes/title)
Example: a 1200×900 plot at 300 DPI will produce an image roughly 1200×(300/96) ≈ 3750 pixels wide (plus annotation padding).
Downloads, filenames, and privacy#
Exports download via your browser (usually to your default Downloads folder).
Filenames are conservative and include dataset/field/view info, e.g.:
<dataset>_<color-field>_<view>_<timestamp>.svg<dataset>_<color-field>_<view>_dpi300_<timestamp>.png(when exporting multiple DPIs)
Important
Exports can embed provenance metadata that may include dataset names/ids and source paths/URLs. If you are sharing figures publicly, skim Metadata and provenance for how to inspect or strip metadata.
Screenshot placeholder (you will replace later)#
The Figure Export panel is the entry point for publication-grade SVG/PNG exports.#
Recommended reading order#
Screenshots (capture checklist)