📦 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
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.
| Plugin ID | 5157 |
| Repository page | plugins.qgis.org/plugins/qrviz |
| Total downloads (all versions) | 1,103 |
| Votes | 12 |
| Latest version | 2.11.2 — security scan passed, awaiting manual repository approval |
| Latest publicly listed version | 1.4.5 |
| Version | QGIS ≥ | QGIS ≤ | Downloads | Released | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2.11.2 | 3.16.0 | 3.99.0 | 0 | Sep 6, 2026 | Security scan passed, pending manual repository approval |
| 1.4.5 | 3.0.0 | 3.99.0 | 311 | Aug 16, 2026 | Published |
| 1.1.0 | 3.0.0 | 3.99.0 | 792 | May 8, 2026 | Published (archived, superseded by 1.4.5) |
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.
| Version | Change |
|---|---|
| 2.11.2 | Fixed the plugin being blocked by the QGIS Plugin Repository's automated security scan (Bandit "Try, Except, Pass detected", 20 findings across colorbar_item.py, colorbar_panel.py and qrviz.py). Every bare except Exception: pass on an optional/best-effort path now logs via QgsMessageLog.logMessage() under a "RasterViz" tab instead of silently discarding the error. No behavioural change on the happy path |
| 2.11.1 | Old "QRVIZ"-tagged colour ramps left over from versions ≤ 2.6.0 are now cleared from QGIS's style database on startup, so the "Raster colour ramp" picker stays QGIS-built-ins-only for upgraders too, not just fresh installs |
| 2.11.0 | Removed the native Position and Size / Rotation / Item ID / Rendering / Variables block from the bottom of the panel, position the item by dragging it on the layout canvas instead, resizing stays covered by the Width/Height fields |
| 2.10.1 | Collapsed the panel's item heading from two lines down to one, and added the plugin's own icon next to it |
| 2.10.0 | Added "Min"/"Max" and "Interpolation" (Discrete/Linear/Exact) controls to the panel, editing them updates the linked raster's renderer immediately, no manual refresh needed |
| 2.9.2 | Fixed the printed map inside the Layout still showing old raster colours after a ramp change until "Refresh view" was pressed, Map items now invalidate and redraw immediately too |
| 2.9.1 | Fixed the RasterViz dock panel landing in its own row instead of joining the native Items/Item Properties/Layout/Guides tab group on first install |
Full history in rasterviz-v2-layout-native/README.md and the plugin's own metadata.txt changelog field.
| 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.
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/.
| Version | Method | Status | Source | Download |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| v2.11.2 (Layout-native), latest | Native QGIS Layout item, no separate window, drops straight into Print Layout next to Legend/Scale Bar/Picture | Pending QGIS Plugin Repository approval, install manually via Install from ZIP for now | rasterviz-v2-layout-native/ |
RasterViz-v2-layout-native-2.11.2.zip |
| v1.4.5 | Standalone dialog window (Matplotlib), colormap gallery, RGB composite, web basemaps, discrete classification, single-window export | Live on plugins.qgis.org/plugins/qrviz, installable from QGIS → Plugins → Manage and Install Plugins | qrviz/ |
RasterViz-v1.4.5.zip |
| v1.1.0 (early release) | Standalone dialog window (Matplotlib), the first public single-band/discrete/RGB/colorbar release, before vector overlays and web basemaps existed | Archived, kept for reference, superseded by v1.4.5 | n/a | RasterViz-v1.1.0.zip |
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.
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 ownmetadata.txtchangelog 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.
%%{init: {'theme': 'base', 'themeVariables': {'background': 'transparent', 'primaryColor': '#ffffff', 'primaryBorderColor': '#000000', 'primaryTextColor': '#000000', 'lineColor': '#000000', 'secondaryColor': '#ffffff', 'tertiaryColor': '#ffffff', 'clusterBkg': 'transparent', 'clusterBorder': '#000000', 'fontFamily': 'Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif'}}}%%
flowchart TD
subgraph v1["v1.x — standalone dialog (Matplotlib)"]
direction TB
v110["v1.1.0 — published<br/>First public release: single-band, discrete,<br/>RGB composite, colorbar"]
v120["v1.2.0<br/>Ported back from the standalone desktop edition<br/>+ vector overlays (GeoPandas/Fiona)<br/>+ Contextily web basemaps"]
v130["v1.3.0<br/>QtAwesome icons replaced by a built-in SVG set"]
v131["v1.3.1<br/>Last version still using Contextily"]
v140["v1.4.0<br/>Contextily replaced by a native QGIS XYZ engine<br/>Zero third-party dependencies reached"]
v141["v1.4.1<br/>UI reorganized into labeled group boxes<br/>All in-app icons removed"]
v142["v1.4.2<br/>Skips the no-data mask loop when not needed"]
v143["v1.4.3<br/>Removed the 300px cap on the settings panel"]
v144["v1.4.4<br/>Fixed basemap/overlay alignment offset"]
v145["v1.4.5 — published<br/>Fixed 10 Bandit B110/B112 findings"]
v110 --> v120 --> v130 --> v131 --> v140 --> v141 --> v142 --> v143 --> v144 --> v145
end
subgraph v2["v2.x — Layout-native (pure PyQGIS + PyQt5)"]
direction TB
v200["v2.0.0 — complete rewrite<br/>Scope cut to one native Layout colorbar item<br/>Matplotlib dependency removed entirely"]
v210["v2.1.0<br/>Embeds native Position/Size/Rotation/Frame widget<br/>+ Number of colors, Reverse, Bar thickness, Tick position"]
v220["v2.2.0<br/>Dedicated dock panel added to every Layout window<br/>+ Rounded corners, adjustable padding"]
v221["v2.2.1<br/>Fixed empty-state/item-form switch crash"]
v230["v2.3.0<br/>Renamed to 'RasterViz Colorbar'"]
v240["v2.4.0<br/>Removed Bar thickness setting<br/>+ Text color (Black/White) option"]
v241["v2.4.1<br/>Fixed the drawn bar not growing to match Width/Height"]
v242["v2.4.2<br/>Text and bar geometry unified via QgsTextRenderer"]
v250["v2.5.0<br/>Fixed a NaN colorbar bug<br/>+ independent tick/label colour and font"]
v260["v2.6.0<br/>Domain colour ramps (NDVI/mangrove/water/...) via QgsStyle"]
v270["v2.7.0<br/>Removed the custom ramps<br/>+ Discrete (stepped) bar style"]
v280["v2.8.0<br/>Renamed display name to plain 'RasterViz'"]
v290["v2.9.0<br/>Auto-switches the layer to Singleband pseudocolor on pick"]
v291["v2.9.1<br/>Fixed dock panel tab grouping on first install"]
v292["v2.9.2<br/>Layout Map items now refresh immediately on ramp change"]
v2100["v2.10.0<br/>Added Min/Max and Interpolation controls"]
v2101["v2.10.1<br/>Collapsed panel heading, added the plugin's icon"]
v2110["v2.11.0<br/>Removed the native Position/Size block from the panel"]
v2111["v2.11.1<br/>Cleared old QRVIZ-tagged colour ramps from QGIS's style DB"]
v2112["v2.11.2 — latest, pending approval<br/>Fixed Bandit Try/Except/Pass findings<br/>Security scan: 100% pass rate, 0 issues"]
v200 --> v210 --> v220 --> v221 --> v230 --> v240 --> v241 --> v242 --> v250 --> v260 --> v270 --> v280 --> v290 --> v291 --> v292 --> v2100 --> v2101 --> v2110 --> v2111 --> v2112
end
v145 -.->|"complete rewrite, not incremental"| v200
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.
%%{init: {'theme': 'base', 'themeVariables': {'background': 'transparent', 'primaryColor': '#ffffff', 'primaryBorderColor': '#000000', 'primaryTextColor': '#000000', 'lineColor': '#000000', 'secondaryColor': '#ffffff', 'tertiaryColor': '#ffffff', 'clusterBkg': 'transparent', 'clusterBorder': '#000000', 'fontFamily': 'Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif'}}}%%
flowchart TD
A[Linked raster layer] --> B[Read its renderer: Singleband pseudocolor or Gray]
B --> C[Get colour ramp + classification Min/Max]
C --> D[Sample N colours along the ramp]
D --> E[QPainter draws the bar: continuous or discrete blocks]
E --> F[Ticks and label drawn via QgsTextRenderer]
F --> G[Rendered live on the Print Layout canvas]
H[Layer Symbology changed on the map] --> B
I[Ramp changed from the RasterViz panel] --> B
I --> J[Map canvas refreshed immediately]
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.
%%{init: {'theme': 'base', 'themeVariables': {'background': 'transparent', 'primaryColor': '#ffffff', 'primaryBorderColor': '#000000', 'primaryTextColor': '#000000', 'lineColor': '#000000', 'secondaryColor': '#ffffff', 'tertiaryColor': '#ffffff', 'clusterBkg': 'transparent', 'clusterBorder': '#000000', 'fontFamily': 'Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif'}}}%%
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]
Feature sets differ by version, v2 is scoped narrowly to the colorbar item itself; v1.4.5 is the full standalone toolkit.
| Area | Capability |
|---|---|
| Panel | Dedicated "RasterViz" dock panel added to every Layout window automatically, follows the current selection, one-click "+ Add Colorbar" button |
| Layer support | Singleband pseudocolor or Singleband gray, kept live-synced with the layer's own Symbology |
| Orientation & size | Horizontal or vertical, explicit width/height (what's typed is exactly what the bar draws at) |
| Bar style | Continuous gradient or discrete/stepped blocks, with a configurable number of sampled colours |
| Bar shape | Optional rounded corners; optional pointed "extend" ends |
| Ticks & label | Configurable tick count, padding and decimals; independent colour and font for tick numbers and the axis label |
| Live sync | Colours and Min/Max re-read automatically when the layer's Symbology changes; changing the ramp from the panel refreshes the map canvas immediately too |
| Dependencies | Zero third-party, pure PyQGIS + PyQt5, no Matplotlib, no extra window |
| 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 |
The newest release, RasterViz v2.11.2 (Layout-native), is still pending QGIS Plugin Repository approval, so for now it installs manually:
-
In QGIS, open Plugins → Manage and Install Plugins…
-
Go to the Install from ZIP tab, click … next to "ZIP file", and browse to the downloaded zip
-
Select the file and click Open — the path fills in the ZIP file field, then click Install Plugin
- Wait for the green "Plugin installed successfully" banner
- 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:
- In QGIS: Plugins → Manage and Install Plugins → All, search for RasterViz, and click Install Plugin (pulls v1.4.5 directly from the official repository)
- Alternatively, download the ZIP from the plugin's Versions page, or from this repo's
releases/folder, 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) |
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.
- 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 (shared by both versions):
| 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) |
PyQt5 (via qgis.PyQt) |
GPL v3 (Riverbank Computing) | The GUI toolkit behind the v1.4.5 dialog and the v2 RasterViz dock panel |
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) | n/a | The expanded basemap batch added in v1.4.0 (BaseMapDE, TopPlusOpen, SwissFederalGeoportal, nlmaps, USGS, WaymarkedTrails, OpenSnowMap, and others) |
Historical thanks (powered the v1.x dialog line, not needed by v2):
| Project | License | Powered |
|---|---|---|
| Matplotlib | Matplotlib License (BSD-compatible) | The entire v1.x rendering backbone, every colormap, colorbar, north arrow, scale bar, and export (PNG/SVG/TIFF/PDF), from v1.1.0 through v1.4.5; v2 draws everything itself with pure PyQGIS/PyQt5 instead |
| NumPy | BSD 3-Clause | Array operations behind pixel reading, stretch calculation (min-max/percentile), and the QImage → RGBA conversion for basemaps, v1.1.0 through v1.4.5; not needed by v2 |
| 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