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I want to use mathematica to make plots for the book I'm writing. I want to make a plot in mathematica, save it as picture, then import it in quarkxpress, and finally export it as pdf.

My question is which format is best to use? When I go to 'save graphics as' in mathematica I have variety of formats to chose (.jpeg, .png, .jpeg2000, .gif, .bmp)

balboa
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1 Answers1

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If Quark had imported PDF, that would have your best bet. But apparently it doesn't. It handles transparency and other such things.

So for vector graphics use either EPS or, on Windows try WMF. If you do use WMF, beware of issues around WMF with BarChart and friends. See the workaround in the edit to this answer.

For raster graphics eg with textures, use PNG. This is the lightest weight of the raster type graphic format that I am aware of.

Community
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Verbeia
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  • I think recent Quark software does handle PDFs but EPS is still a better option generally, as it's designed for that task. – cormullion Jan 03 '12 at 21:32
  • I've tried EPS and it works fine, although when exporting it from quark to pdf, it alerts me that some EPS pictures use screen fonts unavailable to my system (I'm on windows). But still it looks nice, I don't see any problems. WMF does not work. It does not show all parts of my plot, looks really bad. Thank you. – balboa Jan 03 '12 at 21:48
  • For the font warning you might like to search Mathgroup for discussions about embedding fonts. I don't recall exactly but I think you can set options that will embed the fonts you are using. i know this has been discussed over the years. – Mike Honeychurch Jan 03 '12 at 22:39