geom_magick: Draw images as point shapes using magick

In ggalign: A 'ggplot2' Extension for Composable Visualization

Draw images as point shapes using magick

Description

Reads an image with magick, applies optional processing, and uses the result as the graphical shape for points in a plot.

This is useful when you want to replace the usual point symbols with arbitrary images while keeping full control over their placement, size, and interpolation.

Usage

geom_magick(
  mapping = NULL,
  data = NULL,
  stat = "identity",
  position = "identity",
  ...,
  magick = NULL,
  magick_params = list(),
  interpolate = TRUE,
  na.rm = FALSE,
  show.legend = NA,
  inherit.aes = TRUE
)

Arguments

mapping	Set of aesthetic mappings created by aes(). If specified and inherit.aes = TRUE (the default), it is combined with the default mapping at the top level of the plot. You must supply mapping if there is no plot mapping.
data	The data to be displayed in this layer. There are three options: If NULL, the default, the data is inherited from the plot data as specified in the call to ggplot(). A data.frame, or other object, will override the plot data. All objects will be fortified to produce a data frame. See fortify() for which variables will be created. A function will be called with a single argument, the plot data. The return value must be a data.frame, and will be used as the layer data. A function can be created from a formula (e.g. ~ head(.x, 10)).
stat	The statistical transformation to use on the data for this layer. When using a ⁠geom_*()⁠ function to construct a layer, the stat argument can be used to override the default coupling between geoms and stats. The stat argument accepts the following: A Stat ggproto subclass, for example StatCount. A string naming the stat. To give the stat as a string, strip the function name of the stat_ prefix. For example, to use stat_count(), give the stat as "count". For more information and other ways to specify the stat, see the layer stat documentation.
position	A position adjustment to use on the data for this layer. This can be used in various ways, including to prevent overplotting and improving the display. The position argument accepts the following: The result of calling a position function, such as position_jitter(). This method allows for passing extra arguments to the position. A string naming the position adjustment. To give the position as a string, strip the function name of the position_ prefix. For example, to use position_jitter(), give the position as "jitter". For more information and other ways to specify the position, see the layer position documentation.
...	These dots are for future extensions and must be empty.
magick	A function (purrr-style formula is accepted) that takes an image_read() object as input and returns an object compatible with as.raster(). You can use any of the ⁠image_*()⁠ functions from the magick package to process the raster image.
magick_params	Additional arguments passed on to magick
interpolate	A logical value indicating whether to linearly interpolate the image (the alternative is to use nearest-neighbour interpolation, which gives a more blocky result).
na.rm	If FALSE, the default, missing values are removed with a warning. If TRUE, missing values are silently removed.
show.legend	logical. Should this layer be included in the legends? NA, the default, includes if any aesthetics are mapped. FALSE never includes, and TRUE always includes. It can also be a named logical vector to finely select the aesthetics to display. To include legend keys for all levels, even when no data exists, use TRUE. If NA, all levels are shown in legend, but unobserved levels are omitted.
inherit.aes	If FALSE, overrides the default aesthetics, rather than combining with them. This is most useful for helper functions that define both data and aesthetics and shouldn't inherit behaviour from the default plot specification, e.g. annotation_borders().

Aesthetics

geom_magick() understands the following aesthetics. Required aesthetics are displayed in bold and defaults are displayed for optional aesthetics:

•	x
•	y
•	image
•	alpha	→ NA
•	angle	→ 0
•	fill	→ NA
•	group	→ inferred
•	hjust	→ 0.5
•	size	→ via theme()
•	vjust	→ 0.5

Learn more about setting these aesthetics in vignette("ggplot2-specs").

Examples

set.seed(123)
d <- data.frame(
    x = rnorm(10),
    y = rnorm(10),
    image = "https://jeroenooms.github.io/images/frink.png",
    fill = sample(c("A", "B", "C", "D"), 10, replace = TRUE),
    alpha = rnorm(10, mean = 0.5, sd = 0.1)
)
d$alpha <- pmax(pmin(d$alpha, 1), 0)
ggplot(d, aes(x, y)) +
    geom_magick(aes(image = image, fill = fill, alpha = alpha))

ggalign documentation built on Nov. 5, 2025, 7:16 p.m.