Sure, just use fig.canvas.tostring_rgb() to dump the rgb buffer to a string.
Similarly, there’s fig.canvas.tostring_argb() if you need the alpha channel, as well.
If you want to dump the buffer to a file, there’s fig.canvas.print_rgb and fig.canvas.print_rgba (or equivalently, print_raw, which is rgba).
You’ll need to draw the figure before dumping the buffer with tostring*. (i.e. do fig.canvas.draw() before calling fig.canvas.tostring_rgb())
Just for fun, here’s a rather silly example:
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import numpy as np
def main():
t = np.linspace(0, 4*np.pi, 1000)
fig1, ax = plt.subplots()
ax.plot(t, np.cos(t))
ax.plot(t, np.sin(t))
inception(inception(fig1))
plt.show()
def fig2rgb_array(fig):
fig.canvas.draw()
buf = fig.canvas.tostring_rgb()
ncols, nrows = fig.canvas.get_width_height()
return np.fromstring(buf, dtype=np.uint8).reshape(nrows, ncols, 3)
def inception(fig):
newfig, ax = plt.subplots()
ax.imshow(fig2rgb_array(fig))
return newfig
main()
