QGIS plugin that renders publication-quality raster and vector maps directly inside QGIS, styled after Python's rasterio.show(). Pick a colormap, choose a stretch, drop a legend, overlay vector data, add a web basemap, grid, scale bar, and north arrow — then export at 300 DPI. Zero third-party Python dependencies.
Author: Defani Arman Alfitriansyah
✅ Version 1.4.5 has been approved and is now live on the official plugins.qgis.org/plugins/qrviz listing. Install it directly from QGIS → Plugins → Manage and Install Plugins, or download it from the plugin page — no need to grab the ZIP from GitHub anymore.
RasterViz reproduces rasterio.show()'s rendering behavior without needing rasterio, GDAL bindings, or any pip package — everything is read through QGIS-native APIs and handed to the same Matplotlib call.
flowchart TD
A[QGIS raster layer] --> B[raster_io.py — block decode to NumPy array]
B --> C{Stretch mode}
C -- Actual Min-Max --> D[vmin, vmax = array.min, array.max]
C -- Percentile --> E[vmin, vmax = np.percentile]
C -- Manual --> F[vmin, vmax = user input]
D --> G[ax.imshow with cmap, vmin, vmax]
E --> G
F --> G
G --> H[Export: PNG 300 DPI, SVG, TIFF, PDF]
| Area | Capability |
|---|---|
| Raster rendering | Single-band continuous, discrete/classified (per-class color, label, decimals), RGB composite with independent per-band stretch |
| Colormaps | Custom scientific palettes (NDVI, LST, mangrove/carbon stock, SAR backscatter) plus the full Matplotlib set |
| Stretch modes | Actual min-max, percentile, or manual vmin/vmax |
| Vector overlays | Shapefile, GeoPackage, GeoJSON, KML/KMZ with single or categorized (by-field) symbology |
| Basemaps | 49 providers (Esri, OSM, CartoDB, OpenTopoMap, NASA GIBS, national agencies), rendered natively via QgsMapRendererCustomPainterJob |
| Cartographic tools | Pointed colorbar, DMS/DM/DD/UTM coordinate ticks, north arrow, scale bar |
| Export | PNG (300 DPI), SVG, TIFF, PDF |
- In QGIS: Plugins → Manage and Install Plugins → All, search for RasterViz, and click Install Plugin (pulls the latest approved version, 1.4.5, directly from the official repository)
- Alternatively, download the ZIP from the plugin's Versions page and install via Install from ZIP
- Open it from Raster menu → RasterViz, or the toolbar icon
If upgrading from a v1.3.x install that used the old "Install Dependencies" button, delete the old plugin folder first so no leftover vendored/ folder gets picked up.
| Requirement | Detail |
|---|---|
| QGIS | 3.0 – 3.99, with its bundled Python 3 |
| Third-party dependencies | None — raster/vector reading and web basemaps are 100% QGIS-native (QgsRasterLayer, QgsVectorLayer, QgsMapRendererCustomPainterJob) |
| Version | Change |
|---|---|
| 1.4.5 | Fixed 10 Bandit B110/B112 findings — caught exceptions on optional fallback paths now log via QgsMessageLog instead of silently discarding |
| 1.4.4 | Fixed basemap/overlay alignment offset — now uses QGIS's visibleExtent() instead of the raw requested extent |
| 1.4.3 | Removed the 300px cap on the settings panel width |
| 1.4.2 | Skips the no-data mask loop entirely for blocks with no no-data pixels (hasNoData() check) |
| 1.4.1 | UI reorganized into labeled group boxes; all in-app icons removed |
| 1.4.0 | Contextily replaced by a native QGIS XYZ basemap engine — zero third-party dependencies reached |
Full history in metadata.txt's changelog field inside the plugin folder.
- Basemap alignment is exact even for non-Web-Mercator CRSes, since QGIS's own renderer performs the reprojection rather than a manual tile-warp.
- Basemap tiles are cached per (provider, CRS, view), so an unrelated control tweak (title, font, decimals) doesn't re-fetch or re-render the basemap.
- RasterViz began as this QGIS plugin, was rebuilt as a standalone desktop edition to run without QGIS, then ported back into the QGIS plugin in v1.2.0.
RasterViz only exists because of the open-source GIS and Python communities that built the tools it stands on. A humble thank-you to the developers behind each of them.
Currently powering RasterViz (runtime dependencies):
| Project | License | What it does for RasterViz |
|---|---|---|
| QGIS / PyQGIS | GNU GPL v2+ | The desktop GIS platform itself — raster reading, vector reading, coordinate transforms, and the web basemap render pipeline (QgsRasterLayer, QgsVectorLayer, QgsMapRendererCustomPainterJob) |
| Matplotlib | Matplotlib License (BSD-compatible) | The entire rendering backbone — every colormap, colorbar, north arrow, scale bar, and export (PNG/SVG/TIFF/PDF) is drawn through it |
| NumPy | BSD 3-Clause | Array operations behind pixel reading, stretch calculation (min-max/percentile), and the QImage → RGBA conversion for basemaps |
PyQt5 (via qgis.PyQt) |
GPL v3 (Riverbank Computing) | The GUI toolkit behind the entire dialog |
Pattern & data credits for the native basemap engine (since v1.4.0):
| Project | License | Credit |
|---|---|---|
| QuickMapServices | GNU GPL v2+ | The native type=xyz&zmin=…&zmax=…&url=… connection pattern that basemap_io.py follows |
| xyzservices / leaflet-providers | BSD 2-Clause | Tile URL templates, zoom limits, and attribution strings |
| Klas Karlsson (reference script) | — | The expanded basemap batch added in v1.4.0 (BaseMapDE, TopPlusOpen, SwissFederalGeoportal, nlmaps, USGS, WaymarkedTrails, OpenSnowMap, and others) |
Historical thanks (used in earlier releases, no longer required as of v1.4.0):
| Project | License | Powered |
|---|---|---|
| Contextily | BSD 3-Clause | Web basemap layer, v1.2.0–v1.3.1, before the native engine replaced it |
| Rasterio | BSD 3-Clause | Raster reading, v1.1.0–v1.2.0, before the switch to QgsRasterLayer |
| GDAL | MIT | Underlying raster/vector I/O for Rasterio and Fiona in early releases |
| GeoPandas | BSD 3-Clause | Vector reading, v1.2.0, before the switch to QgsVectorLayer/OGR |
| Fiona | BSD 3-Clause | Vector reading, v1.2.0, alongside GeoPandas |
| QtAwesome | MIT | Toolbar/layer-panel icons through v1.2.0, replaced by a built-in SVG icon set in v1.3.0, then removed entirely in v1.4.1 |
Special thanks to the global open-source community for continuing to democratize geospatial technology — and to everyone who writes the papers whose figures made me want to build this in the first place.
I'm still a beginner at all this — I started RasterViz mostly because I kept admiring the clean, publication-style raster figures in remote sensing papers and wanted that same look available natively inside QGIS, without needing to leave for a separate Python script every time. Every library and every maintainer credited above did the hard part; I'm just grateful to be able to stand on it. If you spot something that could be better, I'd genuinely welcome the feedback.
GNU General Public License v2.0 or later — see LICENSE. Matplotlib and NumPy are BSD-licensed; PyQGIS and PyQt5 are GPL v2.
Alfitriansyah, D. A. (2026). RasterViz: Scientific Raster Visualization Plugin for QGIS
(Version 1.4.5) [Software]. https://github.com/Defani/RasterViz