R: Create Empty Plots

Do you know you can create empty plots in R?

Sometimes, you just want to create an empty plot in R...

Just want to remove everything? ↓↓ TLDR ↓↓.

The good old plot command

First, let get ourselves some data.

set.seed(42)
y1 <- rnorm(10)
x1 <- seq_along(y1)

A Typical Plot

Plotting it in a normal way:

plot(x1, y1)

Remove the labels (and titles)

The obvious way

plot(
  x1, y1,
  xlab = "", ylab = "",
  main = ""
)

An alternative way

plot(
  x1, y1,
  xlab = "Oh no I'm gone", ylab = "Oh no I'm gone",
  ann = FALSE # <- added this
)

Remove some ticks

plot(
  x1, y1,
  xaxt = "n", # suppress x-ticks
  yaxt = "n" # suppress y-ticks
)

Remove the points

plot(x1, y1, col = rgb(0, 0, 0, 0))  # Set alpha to 0

Remove surrounding box

plot(x1, y1, fg = rgb(0, 0, 0, 0))  # Set alpha to 0

Remove everything!? (Part 1)

plot(
  x1, y1,
  xaxt = "n", yaxt = "n",  # ticks
  ann = FALSE,             # labels + titles
  fg = rgb(0, 0, 0, 0),    # surrounding box
  col = rgb(0, 0, 0, 0)    # data points
)

You are loking at an empty white image.

Remove everything!? (Part 2)

But wait, there's more. The image is still white. Lets plot a transparent one 😎.

png(
  filename = "empty-Rplot.png",
  bg = rgb(0, 0, 0, 0)
)
plot(
  x1, y1,
  xaxt = "n", yaxt = "n",  # ticks
  ann = FALSE,             # labels + titles
  fg = rgb(0, 0, 0, 0),    # surrounding box
  col = rgb(0, 0, 0, 0)    # data points
)
dev.off()

transparent image below ↓

You are loking at an empty transparent image ↑.

Note: Not all image formats support transparent background, e.g. .jpg files