ggplot2 Plot with Transparent Background in R (2 Examples)

In this post, I’ll illustrate how to export a ggplot2 graph with transparent background in R programming.

The tutorial consists of the following information:

Here’s the step-by-step process…

Example Data, Add-On Packages & Default Graph

To start with, let’s construct some exemplifying data:

data <- data.frame(x = 1:5,         # Create example data
                   y = 5:9)
data                                # Print example data

Table 1 shows the structure of the example data – It has five rows and two columns.

To be able to use the functions of the ggplot2 package, we also need to install and load ggplot2:

install.packages("ggplot2")         # Install & load ggplot2 package
library("ggplot2")

As next step, we can draw our data with default background:

ggp <- ggplot(data, aes(x, y)) +    # Create default ggplot2 plot
  geom_bar(stat = "identity")
ggp                                 # Draw default ggplot2 plot

Figure 1 shows the output of the previous syntax: A ggplot2 barchart without opacity.

Example 1: Make Rectangle Elements of ggplot2 Plot Transparent Using element_rect

Example 1 shows how to export a ggplot2 plot with transparent rectangle elements.

For this, we can use the theme function and the rect argument as shown below:

ggp_transparent1 <- ggp +           # Make background transparent
  theme(rect = element_rect(fill = "transparent"))

Next, we can use the ggsave function to write our transparent plot to a PNG file:

ggsave(ggp_transparent1,            # Save transparent png file
       filename = "ggp_transparent1.png",
       bg = "transparent")

Have a look at your current working directory after running the previous R code. You should find a ggplot2 plot with transparent background.

Example 2: Make All Background Elements of ggplot2 Plot Transparent Using theme

This example shows how to manually specify all background elements that you want to remove.

Have a look at the following R code:

ggp_transparent2 <- ggp +           # Remove background elements manually
  theme(legend.background = element_rect(fill = "transparent"),
        legend.box.background = element_rect(fill = "transparent"),
        panel.background = element_rect(fill = "transparent"),
        panel.grid.major = element_blank(),
        panel.grid.minor = element_blank(),
        plot.background = element_rect(fill = "transparent", color = NA))

Next, we can export our plot using the ggsave function as we already did in Example 1:

ggsave(ggp_transparent2,            # Save transparent png file
       filename = "ggp_transparent2.png",
       bg = "transparent")

Video & Further Resources

Have a look at the following video of my YouTube channel. In the video, I illustrate the topics of the present tutorial in RStudio.

In addition to the video, you may want to read the other articles on this homepage. Some tutorials are shown below.

• Beginner/Advanced Tutorial for the ggplot2 Package
• Change Background Color of ggplot2 Plot
• Remove Grid, Background Color, Top & Right Borders from ggplot2 Plot
• Graphics Gallery in R
• R Programming Overview

To summarize: At this point of the tutorial you should know how to make the background of a ggplot2 graphic transparent with alpha = 0 in the R programming language. Don’t hesitate to let me know in the comments, in case you have further questions.