[glup]

Similar sentiments here. I get slightly further with ggplot2 but still end up fixing stuff manually in Illustrator which adds significant time. Anyone know 1) a more customizable plotting library or 2) a way to apply manual changes to new input pdfs? Biggest sticking points for me are overlapping labels and compositing multiple figures

[_Wintermute]

I find matplotlib far more flexible than ggplot. Which means 9 times out of 10 I can make the graph in about 5 lines of ggplot, and the more unusual takes about 50 lines of matplotlib.

Have you tried D3 for static plots? It looks very verbose, but offers a lot of fine control.

[Fomite]

Buying a copy of Illustrator was pretty much the best thing that ever happened to my plotting.

[gcatalfamo]

How did illustrator help you?

[Fomite]

The amount of basic formatting, changes, etc. that are trivial in a proper vector graphics editor but hard to cajole ggplot2, matplotlib or R's base graphics are...extensive.

[IndianAstronaut]

I find google charts a nice balance between ease of use and good looking charts.