I'm writing a thesis with a large number of ggplot images in them.
I typically render a section at a time using an Rmarkdown notebook, save as PDF, then export the generated \LaTeX code with the images generated into my main thesis \LaTeX document.
Each of the individual figures I generate using ggplot are saved as individual PDF files, and each data point seems to be saved as a separate element in the PDF image file. My graphs have a lot of data points in them and when loading even a single compiled Rmarkdown notebook into a PDF, the notebook PDF itself takes a minute or two to render when viewed in any common PDF Viewer.
I guess one way to solve this problem would be to have the compiler render my ggplot images as PNG rather than PDF. But I haven't been able to find a way to do that. Does anyone have any ideas?