RasterViz

A QGIS plugin for creating publication-quality scientific raster visualizations styled after rasterio.show(), directly inside QGIS without writing Python code.

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📦 Latest release: v2.11.2 — recommended for all new installs. sha256: e2a1576558ab92017a9500264d3544c36d3743b87016b9783d0b4ba0377bd7fd

QGIS plugin that produces scientific/publication-style raster visualizations. Built as a few different approaches over time, a standalone dialog window with a full toolkit (colormap gallery, stretch modes, RGB composite, vector overlays, web basemaps, one-shot export), and now a native Layout item for building the same scientific-style colorbar directly inside a QGIS Print Layout. Each approach has been progressively simplified so the same publication-style result is easier to get to. Zero third-party Python dependencies, in every release.

Start with v2.11.2 if you’re new here. It’s the easiest way to get a publication-style colorbar: no separate dialog window, no manual export step — it drops straight into QGIS’s own Print Layout next to North Arrow/Scale Bar/Legend, reads its colours live off your raster layer’s own symbology, and updates instantly through its own “RasterViz” dock panel. The 2.11.x line has mostly been stability/compatibility fixes on top of that (see What’s New below); v1.4.5 remains available separately for anyone who specifically needs the older standalone toolkit (RGB composite, web basemaps, discrete classification).

Author: Defani Arman Alfitriansyah

What is RasterViz?¶

RasterViz is a QGIS plugin (Plugin ID 5157 on the official QGIS Plugin Repository) for producing scientific, publication-style raster visualizations without leaving QGIS. It’s shipped as two parallel lines: v1.x, a standalone dialog window with a full cartographic toolkit (colormap gallery, RGB composite, web basemaps, discrete classification, one-shot export), and v2.x (Layout-native), a lighter native Layout item scoped to just the colorbar, built to sit directly inside QGIS’s own Print Layout alongside North Arrow, Scale Bar and Legend. Both lines have zero third-party Python dependencies.

Repository status¶

v2.11.2 automated Security & Quality Scan (Sep 6, 2026, 12:20 PM GMT+7): 100.0% pass rate — 5 passed, 0 info items, 0 warnings, 0 critical, across 26 files scanned, 0 total issues. Manual moderator review for public listing is the only step left.

What’s New¶

v2.11.2 (Layout-native), latest¶

Full history in rasterviz-v2-layout-native/README.md and the plugin’s own metadata.txt changelog field.

v1.4.5¶

Full history in metadata.txt’s changelog field inside the plugin folder.

Versions¶

RasterViz is one plugin that’s kept evolving, each release below is an update of the same project, not a separate fork. The newest one, v2.11.2 (Layout-native), is where development is focused now: it takes the same colorbar RasterViz has always drawn and makes it easier to use by dropping it straight into QGIS’s own Print Layout as a native item, instead of a separate dialog window. Source for each release lives in this repository; packaged .zips are in releases/.

v1.4.5’s dialog still covers the full toolkit (colormap gallery, RGB composite, basemaps, discrete classification, one-shot figure export) for anyone who needs it, but v2 is where the colorbar workflow itself has moved on to: living natively inside a Print Layout alongside QGIS’s own North Arrow, Scale Bar, Grid and Legend items instead of a separate window. See rasterviz-v2-layout-native/README.md for v2’s own docs.

Why a native Layout item at all? QGIS’s own Print Layout already has North Arrow, Scale Bar, Grid and Legend as native, drag-and-drop items, but no colorbar item to go with them. v2 was built to fill that one gap, not to compete with it: it drops into the same Layout Designer, resizes and positions the same way as any other native item, and reads its colours straight from the linked raster layer’s own symbology, so it feels like it always belonged there. It’s kept deliberately narrow (just the colorbar) so it stays a small, complementary addition to QGIS’s native layout toolkit, while v1.4.5 remains around for anyone still on the full standalone toolkit.

Full Version History¶

RasterViz is one continuously-versioned plugin (ID 5157), not a set of forks — but only 3 versions have ever been submitted to the QGIS Plugin Repository: v1.1.0, v1.4.5, and v2.11.2 (pending approval). Everything else below is real, documented iteration between those three — 8 intermediate versions on the v1.x dialog line, and 19 on the v2.x Layout-native line — that shipped as source history and changelog entries but was never submitted individually.

⚠️ Open discrepancy: the plugin’s own metadata.txt changelog frames its pre-rewrite coverage as “Version 1.4.7 and earlier”, but this README’s own Versions/What’s New tables treat 1.4.5 as the latest v1.x release. Whether 1.4.6/1.4.7 exist with undocumented changes, or that phrase is stale boilerplate, isn’t resolved here — worth checking against the actual repository version history before the next release.

Render pipeline¶

Each version gets its colours to the page a different way, v2 reads straight off the raster layer’s own renderer and paints directly on the Layout canvas; v1.4.5 decodes the raster itself and hands the array to Matplotlib.

v2.11.2 (Layout-native)¶

v1.4.5 (standalone dialog)¶

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.

Key Features¶

Feature sets differ by version, v2 is scoped narrowly to the colorbar item itself; v1.4.5 is the full standalone toolkit.

v2.11.2 (Layout-native)¶

v1.4.5 (standalone dialog)¶

Installation¶

The newest release, RasterViz v2.11.2 (Layout-native), is still pending QGIS Plugin Repository approval, so for now it installs manually:

1. Download releases/RasterViz-v2-layout-native-2.11.2.zip

2. In QGIS, open Plugins → Manage and Install Plugins…

3. Go to the Install from ZIP tab, click … next to “ZIP file”, and browse to the downloaded zip

   

4. Select the file and click Open — the path fills in the ZIP file field, then click Install Plugin

5. Wait for the green “Plugin installed successfully” banner

6. How to use?

If what’s needed is the full standalone toolkit instead (colormap gallery, RGB composite, basemaps, discrete classification, one-shot export), install v1.4.5 the normal way:

1. In QGIS: Plugins → Manage and Install Plugins → All, search for RasterViz, and click Install Plugin (pulls v1.4.5 directly from the official repository)

2. Alternatively, download the ZIP from the plugin’s Versions page, or from this repo’s releases/ folder, and install via Install from ZIP

3. 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.

Requirements¶

RasterViz v2, Layout-native method, in more detail¶

The rationale and short version live in Versions above (“Why a native Layout item at all?”). For the full write-up, panel walkthrough, and every setting v2 exposes, see rasterviz-v2-layout-native/README.md.

Notes¶

• 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.

Acknowledgments & Credits¶

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 (shared by both versions):

Pattern & data credits for the native basemap engine (since v1.4.0):

Historical thanks (powered the v1.x dialog line, not needed by v2):

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.

A note from the author¶

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.

License¶

GNU General Public License v2.0 or later, see LICENSE. Matplotlib and NumPy are BSD-licensed; PyQGIS and PyQt5 are GPL v2.

Citation¶

Alfitriansyah, D. A. (2026). RasterViz: Scientific Raster Visualization Plugin for QGIS
(Version 1.4.5) [Software]. https://github.com/Defani/RasterViz