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Journal figure checker

Check DPI, column width, format, color, and file size against Nature, Science, Cell, IEEE, NeurIPS, CVPR, ACL, and more. Parsing stays in the browser. Use the size table even before you have a file — it tells you the pixel width to export.

  1. 1
    Pick venue + content type

    Line art for graphs. Photo for microscopy. Combo for mixed panels.

  2. 2
    Note the min pixels

    Export at least that wide at the required DPI so production does not upsample.

  3. 3
    Drop the file

    PNG / JPEG / TIFF. Copy the report into your lab checklist or email to coauthors.

Photos 300 DPI · combo 600 · graphs/line art often 600–1200. Pick line for matplotlib/R plots.

What size do you need?

Minimum pixels for Nature at 300 DPI (photo). Export at least this wide so the journal does not upsample.

LayoutWidthMin px
Single column89 mm1051 px
Double column183 mm2161 px

Max height 247 mm · TIFF, TIF, EPS, PDF, AI, JPEG, JPG · ≤ 30 MB · Arial or Helvetica, 5–7 pt

Drop image here or click to upload
PNG, JPEG, TIFF, GIF, WebP
Upload an image to see compliance results.

Venue spec table

Column widths in millimetres. Min DPI shown for photographs. Confirm against the current author PDF before you ship camera-ready.

VenueSingleDoublePhoto DPIMin px (single)Max MB
Nature89 mm183 mm300105130
Nature Communications88 mm180 mm300103930
Science Advances55 mm184 mm30065025
Science55 mm184 mm30065025
Cell85 mm174 mm300100420
PNAS87 mm178 mm300102810
eLife85 mm174 mm300100425
PLOS ONE83 mm190 mm30098010
Nucleic Acids Research85 mm178 mm300100420
Bioinformatics85 mm177 mm300100420
JAMA82 mm174 mm350113020
NEJM84 mm174 mm30099215
The Lancet85 mm174 mm300100420
BMJ84 mm174 mm30099215
IEEE Transactions88.9 mm181.9 mm300105020
IEEE Access88.9 mm181.9 mm300105025
IEEE TPAMI88.9 mm181.9 mm300105020
Physical Review Letters86 mm178 mm300101615
JACS85 mm178 mm300100420
Angewandte Chemie85 mm178 mm300100420
ACS Nano85 mm178 mm300100420
JMLR83 mm170 mm30098020
TMLR83 mm170 mm30098025
NeurIPS83 mm174 mm30098020
ICML83 mm174 mm30098020
ICLR83 mm174 mm30098020
CVPR88.9 mm181.9 mm300105020
ICCV88.9 mm181.9 mm300105020
ECCV88.9 mm181.9 mm300105020
ACL79 mm165 mm30093315
EMNLP79 mm165 mm30093315
AAAI85 mm178 mm300100420
ACM CHI89 mm178 mm300105120
KDD85 mm178 mm300100420
SIGGRAPH89 mm183 mm300105130
Springer LNCS78 mm122 mm30092115
arXiv (recommended)85 mm180 mm15050250
Nature Methods89 mm183 mm300105130
Nature Medicine89 mm183 mm300105130
Physical Review X86 mm178 mm300101620
USENIX85 mm178 mm300100420
COLM83 mm174 mm30098020
ACM Computing Surveys89 mm183 mm300105125

43 venues. Groups: Life & multidisciplinary · Medical · Physics & chemistry · IEEE & ACM journals · CS journals · CS conferences · Preprint.

Where this helps

Figure production rejects are boring and late. These are the situations labs actually hit.

Camera-ready

After acceptance, Nature/IEEE/CVPR production will bounce low-DPI line art. Check before you zip the source.

First submission

Desk-reject quality bar: unreadable axis labels at column width. Know the px target before you plot.

Lab templates

One matplotlib rcParams / R ggsave size for the lab’s usual venue. The cheat sheet gives the pixel numbers.

Switching venues

NeurIPS column ≠ Nature double-page. Re-check the same PNG against the new journal without re-exporting first.

PaperBanana / BioRender-style panels

AI or composite figures often ship at 72 DPI. Run them here before \includegraphics.

Thesis & arXiv

arXiv is lenient; your journal is not. Use arXiv preset for the preprint, then the real venue for the journal PDF.

How to export so the check passes

Screenshots of a 13-inch laptop are 72–144 DPI. Journals will not resample them into a sharp column. Set physical size first, then DPI.

Python (matplotlib)

fig.set_size_inches(3.5, 2.6)  # ~89 mm single column
fig.savefig("fig1.png", dpi=300, bbox_inches="tight")
# graphs: dpi=600 and content type = Line art

R (ggplot2)

ggsave("fig1.tiff", width = 89, height = 70, units = "mm", dpi = 300, compression = "lzw")

Illustrator / Inkscape

Artboard = journal column width (mm).
Export TIFF or PNG; embed 300–1000 PPI.
Keep type ≥ 6–8 pt after shrink.

PowerPoint / Keynote

Do not screenshot the slide.
File → Export → PNG/TIFF at 2–3× or 300 DPI.
Better: redraw plots in Python/R and overlay labels.

Need the figure drawn from the paper itself? Academic figures (PaperBanana) · Insert images in LaTeX

Common production fails

FAQ

PNG, JPEG, and TIFF bytes in your browser: pixel size, embedded DPI, color mode, format, and file size. It does not upload the image. PDF/EPS/AI cannot be measured here — export a TIFF or PNG at the intended print size, or keep those as vector and skip raster checks.

Generate the figure, then check it

Bibby can draft methodology diagrams from your paper, then you run this checker against the journal you are submitting to.

Academic figures
Journal Figure Spec Checker — DPI, Width, Format | Bibby AI