Exporting results

PIVlab can export your results in six different ways, all reachable from File → Export. Each one needs an existing analysis — run ANALYZE! first, or these panels will have nothing to work with.

Menu item	Use it for
Still image or animation	A picture or video of the vector plot as displayed on screen.
Text file (ASCII)	Plain-text numeric data — the most portable, tool-agnostic option.
MAT file	MATLAB's native format, for further analysis in MATLAB.
Tecplot file	For visualization in Tecplot.
Paraview binary VTK	For visualization in ParaView.
All results to Matlab workspace	Loads every result straight into variables in your current MATLAB session — no file at all.

Still image or animation

File → Export → Still image or animation opens a panel with a format dropdown. The choices depend on what your MATLAB installation supports: PNG, JPG, PDF and Matlab Figure are always available; Archival AVI and MPEG-4 appear too if your system has those video profiles.

PIVlab Save image (sequence) export panel — The **Save image (sequence)** panel.

Field	Meaning
Quality (%)	Compression quality of the exported file.
Frames per second (Hz)	Playback frame rate, for video formats.
Image size (%) / Resolution (dpi)	Output scaling relative to the raw images (newer MATLAB) or DPI (older versions).

Click Export single frame to save exactly what's on screen right now.
Or set First frame / Last frame (pre-filled with your analysed range) and click Export multiple frames to save an image sequence or a video covering that range.

Text file (ASCII)

File → Export → Text file (ASCII) — the most portable option, readable by essentially any tool.

Option	Effect
Add file information	Includes source image file names etc. in the output.
Add column headers	Writes a header row naming each column.
Include derivatives	Calculates and adds derived quantities (see MAT file below for the full list).
Delimiter	comma, tab, or space.

Click Export current frame or Export all frames.

MAT file

File → Export → MAT file saves in MATLAB's native format. By default it exports x, y, velocities, calibration, and vector type. Enable Include derivatives to also calculate and export vorticity, magnitude, divergence, Q criterion, shear, strain, vector angle, and correlation coefficient. Then click Export current frame or Export all frames.

PIVlab Save as MATLAB file export panel — The **Save as MATLAB file** panel.

Tecplot file

File → Export → Tecplot file has a single Include derivatives checkbox, then Save current frame or Save all frames.

Paraview binary VTK

File → Export → Paraview binary VTK has no extra options — just Save current frame or Save all frames.

PIVlab Save as Paraview VTK file export panel — The **Save as Paraview VTK file** panel.

All results to Matlab workspace

File → Export → All results to Matlab workspace is different from the others: there's no panel or file dialog — it immediately writes variables directly into your MATLAB base workspace, ready to use in your own scripts. It creates x, y, u_original/v_original (raw correlation output), u_filtered/v_filtered (after your validation), u_smoothed/v_smoothed, plus vorticity, velocity_magnitude, divergence, q_criterion, shear_rate, strain_rate, vectorangle, correlation_map, uncertainty_map and the calibration factors. Each variable is a cell array with one entry per frame. After running it, check the Command Window — PIVlab prints an explanation of every variable it just created.

Fails silently without results Unlike the other export options, this one does not show an error message if there's nothing to export — it simply does nothing. If your workspace doesn't get any new variables, double-check that you've actually run an analysis.