Plt.show shows full graph but savefig is cropping the image

Question

My code is succesfully saving images to file, but it is cropping important details from the right hand side. Answers exist for fixing this problem when it arises for plt.show, but it is the savefig command that is incorrectly producing the graph in this example. How can this be fixed?

The relevant sample of my code:

import glob
import os
for file in glob.glob("*.oax"):
    try:
        spc_file = open(file, 'r').read()
        newName = file[6:8] + '-' + file[4:6] + '-' + file[0:4] + ' ' + file[8:12] +  ' UTC (Observed) - No Sea Breeze Day'
        plt.title(newName, fontsize=12, loc='left')
        plt.savefig('X:/' + newName + '.png')        
        plt.show()
    except Exception:
        pass

And the images (top is plt.show and bottom is file produced from savefig:

Can you make a simple example that others can test, preferably without having to download extra data and packages? — Neapolitan
@Neapolitan. That's a bit beyond my skill set. The answer provided below suggests that there is a generic solution for this problem, independent of the data. — Joss Kirk
@Neopolitan I don't know how the problem has arisen, so I'm not sure how to produce simpler data that could replicate it. — Joss Kirk

Serenity Serenity · Accepted Answer · 2016-05-25T04:59:36

You may try

plt.savefig('X:/' + newName + '.png', bbox_inches='tight')

Or you may define figure size like

fig = plt.figure(figsize=(9, 11))
...
plt.savefig(filename, bbox_inches = 'tight')

Plt.show shows full graph but savefig is cropping the image

2 Answers