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{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"DiscussionForumPosting","headline":"Off-axes scatter() points unnecessarily saved to PDF when coloured","articleBody":"Scatter plotting a bunch of points while specifying the colour of each point, then changing the axes limits so none of the points are visible, and then saving the result to a PDF, results in a file just as big as if the points were all visible within their default axes limits. This doesn't seem to happen if the colour arg isn't passed to `scatter()`. I haven't tried, but specifying other kinds of point specific attributes, like size, might also trigger the problem . Also, I haven't tried any of the other vector backends, but they may be affected as well.\n\nThis came out of #2423.\n\nExample code:\n\n``` python\nimport numpy as np\nx = np.random.random(20000)\ny = np.random.random(20000)\nc = np.random.random(20000)\n\nfigure()\nscatter(x, y)\npyplot.savefig('scatter.pdf')\nxlim(2, 3) # move axes away for empty plot\npyplot.savefig('scatter_empty.pdf')\n'''\nfile sizes in bytes:\nscatter.pdf:       324187\nscatter_empty.pdf:   6617\n'''\nfigure()\nscatter(x, y, c=c)\npyplot.savefig('scatter_color.pdf')\nxlim(2, 3) # move axes away for empty plot\npyplot.savefig('scatter_color_empty.pdf')\n'''\nfile sizes in bytes:\nscatter_color.pdf:       410722\nscatter_color_empty.pdf: 413541\n'''\n```\n","author":{"url":"https://github.com/mspacek","@type":"Person","name":"mspacek"},"datePublished":"2013-10-02T14:43:58.000Z","interactionStatistic":{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":"https://schema.org/CommentAction","userInteractionCount":12},"url":"https://github.com/2488/matplotlib/issues/2488"}