Creating a beautiful chart is only half the battle — exporting it correctly for its intended destination is equally important. A chart destined for a printed scientific journal has very different requirements from one embedded in a responsive web page or shared on social media.
Vector formats — SVG and PDF — are the gold standard for print and publication. They scale to any size without pixelation, produce crisp text at all resolutions, and can be edited in design tools like Adobe Illustrator or Inkscape. Scientific journals often require figures as PDF or EPS with fonts embedded; always check the submission guidelines before exporting. The trade-off is file size and rendering complexity: vector charts with thousands of data points can produce multi-megabyte files and may strain browser rendering engines.
Raster formats — PNG and JPEG — rule the web. PNG is lossless and supports transparency, making it ideal for charts with sharp edges, text, and transparent backgrounds that need to overlay other content. JPEG is lossy and should generally be avoided for charts because compression artifacts create fuzzy text and color banding, though it may be acceptable for photographic-heavy visualizations. The key PNG export settings are resolution (72 DPI for screens, 300+ DPI for print) and pixel dimensions (export at 2x the display size for retina screens).
Modern interactive visualization libraries add another option: exporting charts as HTML/JavaScript widgets that preserve interactivity. These embeddable charts work beautifully in blog posts and dashboards but require JavaScript support and won't render in email or PDF. The best workflow often produces multiple export formats from a single source: an interactive web version for exploration, a high-resolution PNG for social media, and a vector PDF for print — all generated from the same underlying data and chart specification.