From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Msuck: nntp://news.gmane.io/gmane.comp.tex.context/20102 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Ville Voipio Newsgroups: gmane.comp.tex.context Subject: Re: Figure formats Date: Tue, 26 Apr 2005 17:03:04 +0300 Message-ID: <426E4A18.1050300@kpatents.com> References: <1e17824d02cd0109ad521b4f1841dedf@unibas.ch> <426E458D.1060005@iki.fi> Reply-To: mailing list for ConTeXt users NNTP-Posting-Host: main.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Trace: sea.gmane.org 1114524177 12230 80.91.229.2 (26 Apr 2005 14:02:57 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@sea.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 26 Apr 2005 14:02:57 +0000 (UTC) Original-X-From: ntg-context-bounces@ntg.nl Tue Apr 26 16:02:48 2005 Return-path: Original-Received: from ronja.vet.uu.nl ([131.211.172.88] helo=ronja.ntg.nl) by ciao.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1DQQZY-00083C-CJ for gctc-ntg-context-518@m.gmane.org; Tue, 26 Apr 2005 15:57:56 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost (localhost.localdomain [127.0.0.1]) by ronja.ntg.nl (Postfix) with ESMTP id 6D658127F9; Tue, 26 Apr 2005 16:03:11 +0200 (CEST) Original-Received: from ronja.ntg.nl ([127.0.0.1]) by localhost (ronja.vet.uu.nl [127.0.0.1]) (amavisd-new, port 10024) with LMTP id 13470-02; Tue, 26 Apr 2005 16:03:07 +0200 (CEST) Original-Received: from ronja.vet.uu.nl (localhost.localdomain [127.0.0.1]) by ronja.ntg.nl (Postfix) with ESMTP id 44D78127E5; Tue, 26 Apr 2005 16:03:07 +0200 (CEST) Original-Received: from localhost (localhost.localdomain [127.0.0.1]) by ronja.ntg.nl (Postfix) with ESMTP id B4990127E5 for ; Tue, 26 Apr 2005 16:03:05 +0200 (CEST) Original-Received: from ronja.ntg.nl ([127.0.0.1]) by localhost (ronja.vet.uu.nl [127.0.0.1]) (amavisd-new, port 10024) with LMTP id 13573-01 for ; Tue, 26 Apr 2005 16:03:04 +0200 (CEST) Original-Received: from mail.kpatents.com (mail.kpatents.com [195.170.128.67]) by ronja.ntg.nl (Postfix) with SMTP id AF402127E0 for ; Tue, 26 Apr 2005 16:03:04 +0200 (CEST) Original-Received: (qmail 321 invoked from network); 26 Apr 2005 14:03:04 -0000 Original-Received: from unknown (HELO ?192.168.100.157?) (192.168.100.157) by mail.kpatents.com with SMTP; 26 Apr 2005 14:03:04 -0000 User-Agent: Mozilla Thunderbird 1.0.2 (Windows/20050317) X-Accept-Language: en-us, en Original-To: mailing list for ConTeXt users In-Reply-To: <426E458D.1060005@iki.fi> X-Virus-Scanned: by amavisd-new at ntg.nl X-BeenThere: ntg-context@ntg.nl X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: mailing list for ConTeXt users List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Original-Sender: ntg-context-bounces@ntg.nl Errors-To: ntg-context-bounces@ntg.nl X-Virus-Scanned: by amavisd-new at ntg.nl Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.comp.tex.context:20102 X-Report-Spam: http://spam.gmane.org/gmane.comp.tex.context:20102 > them to the picture itself. I also turn my CorelDraw pics into pdf > before adding them to ConTeXt based text, that inserts them nicely and > makes it easy for me to share any graphics at request (I'm occasionally > asked to send just graphic 3.1 from manual x, so it is a good thing to > have all of them as pdf). An interesting thing is that sometimes some programs make stupid mistakes when exporting to PDF. For example, I have had some bounding box problems when exporting to PDF. The bounding box tends to be the size of a page, which is really not a nice thing. (This happens with CorelDraw 11 in OS X and with older CDR versions in other OSes.) Illustrator should be safe, as PDF is one of its "home" formats. A workaround which I've been using for years is to export in EPS. All graphics programs I've come across have been able to do that reliably. Then the EPS can be converted into a PDF by using one of the following: a) Adobe Distiller b) Ghostscript (epstopdf, eps2pdf, or equivalent) c) Preview in OS X. I have found it very useful to have all illustrations in PDF format in the right size (i.e., clipped to the right size, correct bounding box). Then it is easy to play around with them. Even though vector graphics is -- in theory -- infinitely scalable, in practice it is much better to try and draw the pictures 1:1. If the images are scaled, line widths and annotations are scaled, too. Especially when there are several similar pictures with different scale factor, the result looks odd. So, the final size of the illustration should be known before drawing the actual picture! It is also a good idea to scale the bitmaps down (or up) to the final size and resolution before inserting them. This avoids a number of strange problems when rendering the images. For photographs, 200 dpi should be enough almost always, line art requires 300 dpi. (And a very important exception is that all screen captures should be taken "as is" without any operations on them.) Too large a resolution makes the files unnecessarily large and slow, so even that should be gotten rid of. Graphics packages have different resizeing algorithms, and getting to know all of them takes some experimenting, but it is well worth the trouble. What comes to the figure formats, PNG is good for lossless images (screen captures) or images requiring alpha channel. JPG is best for photographs and other continuous-tone real-world images (and some visualizations). But, whenever possible, use PDF, if there is any choice. - Ville