Make saving images from Interactive window easier

[oerpli]

Environment data

• VS Code version: 1.33
• Extension version (available under the Extensions sidebar): 2019.3.6558
• OS and version: Win 10, 1703
• Python version (& distribution if applicable, e.g. Anaconda): 3.7.3
• Type of virtual environment used (N/A | venv | virtualenv | conda | ...): conda
• Relevant/affected Python packages and their versions: matplotlib maybe

Expected behaviour

Saving multiple images from the interactive tab by dragging to Windows explorer/Finder is easy and comfortable

Actual behaviour

Saving multiple images is rather bothersome, as each file has the same name (download.png) and has to be renamed before saving another file.

Steps to reproduce:

1. Plot multiple images
2. Drag them into the same folder

More Details

Maybe related to: #1470

Currently it is possible to drag the image from the interactive tab to e.g. Windows Explorer to save it as download.png. Saving multiple images in this way is a bit painful, as it is necessary to rename them every time.

Is it possible to give each image in the interactive tab an alt-tag which would then be used as image name? If yes, I would suggest something that uses a ISO Time/Date (: would have to be handled somehow) and e.g. the "cell name". Timestamp should be the time when the cell is executed.

ScriptName.py:
#%% [CellName] Comment
plot1() # ScriptName-CellName-1-TS
plot2() # ScriptName-CellName-2-TS

#%% Comment
plot3() # ScriptName-#Cell-1-TS
plot4() # ScriptName-#Cell-2-TS

[ronglums]

Unfortunately we don't control the name of the images. It comes with VS Code. Curious though - can you share with us your scenario for wanting to save multiple images?

[oerpli]

I am surprised that this isn't a common scenario. I analyze some things, create a several plots and then save those that I would use to show my results to colleagues or similar.

For serious presentations/publications I would of course save them as pdf/svg but sometimes quick & dirty (low res png) is good enough.

[stmax82]

copy&pasting images out of jupyter notebooks and into emails / presentations / whatsapp is my primary way of getting images out of notebooks. Sometimes I even paste into mspaint to add some quick annotations. ;) None of that currently works with VSCode.. :/

[rchiodo]

Yeah sorry, VS code doesn't support copy/paste of images. It's a limitation of the version of electron they use.

[greazer]

Thanks for the feedback! However, we don't have plans on adding this functionality at this time.