Exporting pdf in Windows vs Mac

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Mon, 04/20/2015 - 05:44 am

I realise the preferred vector format for Windows is the enhanced metafile and on Mac it is Quartz pdf. Exporting as a Quartz pdf results in vector axes, labels, traces etc, and 2D image plots are exported as a single object. Exporting as an enhanced metafile results in the same but with the crucial difference that all the individual data points in the 2D image plot are vectors, rather than a single vector object. This often results in unnecessarily large files when exporting on Windows. When on a Windows machine, I could export the figure twice; once as a vector for all the axes, traces, labels etc and once for a rasterised image of the 2D data but this seems rather convoluted considering Mac have a format which achieves this in one shot, rather nicely. There may be a reason obvious to some people as to why this can't happen on a Windows machine (in which case could someone please explain why?) or could someone please point me in a direction of a means to do this?

Thanks,
Lewis
I don't know about differences between Windows and Mac. Since you didn't report your Igor version and other details about your data, my comment might be off. Anyway, exporting a 2D (image) plot in windows either as pdf or emf results in the data itself rendered as a bitmap and the rest (axes, labels) etc. as vector objects. ... unless you have inf or nans in your data. In this case ALL points and objects are exported as individual vector objects. Choose what you like better. If you want to have a bitmap, you only need to get rid of all nans etc. Try for yourself:
make/d/o/n=(10,10) test = 2*p+q
newimage test
SavePICT/E=-2
SavePICT/E=-8

test[0][0] = Nan
SavePICT/E=-8
SavePICT/E=-2

April 24, 2015 at 07:52 am - Permalink