Many SAS analytical procedures now produce graphical output automatically using the ODS Graphics system. These automatic graphics are produced using predefined templates that are shipped with SAS. The templates describe in detail the structure of the graph, including the plots, titles, footnotes, legends, and other attributes of the graph. You can customize the output graphs by editing the predefined template. However, such customization requires detailed knowledge of the Template procedure and the graph template language (GTL).

You might want to make small changes to a graph without having to work with templates and GTL. For example, you might want to add, edit, or remove a title or a footnote. Or, you might want to change the size, shape, and color of graphical elements such as the markers and lines. The ODS Graphics Editor provides a graphical user interface for making these changes easily without knowing the details of templates and GTL.

The ODS Graphics Editor enables you to edit the various elements in the output graph while keeping the data unchanged. In addition, you can annotate a graph by inserting text, lines, arrows, images, and other items in a layer above the graph. You can save the results of your customization as an ODS Graphics Editor file (.sge) and make incremental changes to the file. You can also save the results as a PNG image file for inclusion in other documents.