Turtle module - Saving an image

I would like to figure out how to save a bitmap or vector graphics image after creating a drawing with python's turtle module. After a bit of googling I can't find an easy answer. I did find a module called canvas2svg, but I'm very new to python and I don't know how to install the module. Is there some built in way to save images of the turtle canvas? If not where do I put custom modules for python on an Ubuntu machine?

Solution 1:

from tkinter import *  # Python 3
#from Tkinter import *  # Python 2
import turtle


turtle.forward(100)
ts = turtle.getscreen()

ts.getcanvas().postscript(file="duck.eps")

This will help you; I had the same problem, I Googled it, but solved it by reading the source of the turtle module.

The canvas (tkinter) object has the postscript function; you can use it.

The turtle module has "getscreen" which gives you the "turtle screen" which gives you the Tiknter canvas in which the turtle is drawing.

This will save you in encapsulated PostScript format, so you can use it in GIMP for sure but there are other viewers too. Or, you can Google how to make a .gif from this. You can use the free and open source Inkscape application to view .eps files as well, and then save them to vector or bitmap image files.

Solution 2:

I wrote the svg-turtle package that supports the standard Turtle interface from Python, and writes an SVG file using the svgwrite module. Install it with pip install svg-turtle, and then call it like this:

from svg_turtle import SvgTurtle


def draw_spiral(t):
    t.fillcolor('blue')
    t.begin_fill()
    for i in range(20):
        d = 50 + i*i*1.5
        t.pencolor(0, 0.05*i, 0)
        t.width(i)
        t.forward(d)
        t.right(144)
    t.end_fill()


def write_file(draw_func, filename, width, height):
    t = SvgTurtle(width, height)
    draw_func(t)
    t.save_as(filename)


def main():
    write_file(draw_spiral, 'example.svg', 500, 500)
    print('Done.')


if __name__ == '__main__':
    main()

The canvasvg package is another option. After you run some turtle code, it will convert all the items on the tkinter canvas into an SVG file. This requires tkinter support and a display, where svg-turtle doesn't.