Include axes labels when saving plot from MATLAB GUI - matlab

Question

I have written the following code to try and retrieve ONLY the axes and its plot from my MATLAB GUI.
F = getframe(gca);
figure();
image(F.cdata);
saveas(gcf,'PlotPic','png');
close(gcf);
I noticed, however, that this method does not include ANY of my axis labels or title. Is there any way which I can get the getframe function to include the axis labels and title?
I tried the following code but it did exactly the same
pl = plot(x,y);
xlabel('x')
ylabel('y')
ftmp = figure;
atmp = axes;
copyobj(pl,atmp);
saveas(ftmp,'PlotPic.png');
delete(ftmp);

Answer 1

I would do it using the rect option of the getframe function.
Basically you can provide a 2nd input argument to getframe, which then captures the content of the rectangle specified as argument. The nice thing is that you can use the handles to an axes, so it does not capture your whole GUI figure but rather a specific axes.
For example, using this line:
F = getframe(gca,RectanglePosition);
Concretely, you could set the coordinates of the rectangle such that they span both axis labels and the title as well. Here is a sample code. The pushbutton callback executes getframe and opens a new figure with the content of F.cdata:
function GUI_GetFrame
clc
clear
close all
%// Create GUI components
hFigure = figure('Position',[100 100 500 500],'Units','Pixels');
handles.axes1 = axes('Units','Pixels','Position',[60,90,400,300]);
handles.Button = uicontrol('Style','Push','Position',[200 470 60 20],'String','Get frame','Callback',#(s,e) GetFrameCallback);
%// Just create a dummy plot to illustrate
handles.Period = 2*pi;
handles.Frequency = 1/handles.Period;
handles.x = 0:pi/10:2*pi;
handles.y = rand(1)*sin(handles.Period.*handles.x);
plot(handles.x,handles.y,'Parent',handles.axes1)
title('This is a nice title','FontSize',18);
guidata(hFigure,handles); %// Save handles structure of GUI.
function GetFrameCallback(~,~)
handles = guidata(hFigure);
%// Get the position of the axes you are interested in. The 3rd and
%// 4th coordinates are useful (width and height).
AxesPos = get(handles.axes1,'Position');
%// Call getframe with a custom rectangle size.You might need to change this.
F = getframe(gca,[-30 -30 AxesPos(3)+50 AxesPos(4)+80]);
%// Just to display the result
figure()
imshow(F.cdata)
end
end
The GUI looks like this:
And once I press the pushbutton, this is the figure that pops up:
So the only trouble you have is to figure out the dimensions of the rectangle you need to select to capture the axis labels and the title.
Hope that solves your problem!