Re: thumbnails

["Paul Krummel" <paul.krummel(at)dar.csiro.au>]

Hi Steve,

Well, I pretty much work exclusively in the "Windows" world now.
Like David F., my saviour is the PC version of ghostview! The latest
version of this (V3.6) is great! I usually produce my plot in postscript
(with ps fonts) then use gsview to convert it to a PNG file (portable
network graphics -> GIF replacement, but better). I can even spawn
gsview from IDL to do the conversion using the command line options
of gsview. If the plot I want is to be included in powerpoint or word
then I convert the postscript file to a 300 DPI PNG image (usually with
256 colours). Once this is imported into powerpoint and displayed on
the screen it looks great! Even when imported into word and printed
on a postscript printer, the resolution is also quite impressive. I have
also written a quick and dirty IDL routine to crop the images to remove
excess white space if needed. I prefer PNG to JPEG as JPEG is a
"lossy" format. The size of the 300 DPI PNG file is typically only ~40Kb
for a simple xy plot with a line on it. Looking at the image on screen at
full resolution it is quite large, but this scales nicely when imported
into word etc.

If I wanted to produce publication quality plots, then as has been
mentioned, I use gsview to convert my PS file to EPS and then add
a preview to the EPS file and import this into word. The preview may
look a bit crappy, but I only need it to see how the placement looks etc
and of course, when printed, it prints the PS file itself.

The current pc version of gsview can also convert PS files to a whole
swag of vector formats aswell! Which for some applications is also
very useful.

Hope, this helps or gives you some insight.
Cheers, Paul

"steve" <nobody@nowhere.com> wrote in message
news:<slrn9aatll.6kf.nobody@pooh.nrel.gov>...
> Thanks Mike, for the posts and emails. I've managed to patch a few of the
> figures using the pstoedit-->[.fig file]-->xfig-->[change
linewidths,fonts]
> -->[export to new image file format], it is an interesting program. I'll
> have to weigh the pro's and cons before I decide what to do next, but I
> appreciate all the help from you and others on this ng, thanks. In the
> windows-IDL world, I'm wondering, are things this bad? Is there a good
> vector graphics file format that IDL can readily export to? I can always
> add routines to spit out a bitmap whenever I generate a postscrip figure,
> but naturally, I would be even worse off than I am now (at least the ps IS
> scalable).
>
> --
> Steve S.
>
> yubdub
> steve@CLOTHESmailaps.org
> remove CLOTHES before replying