Export figure for publications

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Dear Igor Team,

I have some figures which I made on Igor and now I want to export those figures for a scientific publication. I tried almost all file types. However, when I want to paste figures to a word document I can't keep the quality anymore. I even tried 1200 dpi output but still have terrible image quality. When I try to export to a pdf file, it has a great quality. But this time, I can't import the pdf file to the word document. Can the word program be responsible for this decrease in the image quality? What else can you suggest me?

Thanks,
Emre
I can't remember the exact order for quality, although I believe Quartz PDF (on Mac) or TIFF at high dpi are your best bets. Some applications show images at screen resolutions rather than true printing resolutions, yet they still print with good quality resolution -- you do not say which is bothering you (viewing or printing). Also, when possible, you might save and then send your images as separate files so the resolution is preserved -- let the publisher deal with the placement issues.

A starting point may be the Exporting Graphics topics from the help files.

--
J. J. Weimer
Chemistry / Chemical & Materials Engineering, UAHuntsville

November 23, 2012 at 07:31 am - Permalink

Hello,

Thank you for your suggestions. Actually, I have already read the help file any it was't helpful at all, since many file types are meant to be high quality file formats . I think, I found the solution. Pdf has the highest quality and I just realized that the publisher accepts the images as separate pdf files. So, I will send them as pdf format to preserve the quality.

Cheers,
Emre

November 23, 2012 at 07:46 am - Permalink

EPS should give you the same quality as PDF when printed. On screen Word displays a low resolution screen preview for EPS.

On Windows Enhanced Metafile (EMF) should also give you high resolution.

There is no simple rule for choosing a graphics format. The best format to use depends on the nature of your graphics, your platform, the software you are exporting to, and the eventual output device. The help topics "Exporting Graphics (Macintosh)" and "Exporting Graphics (Windows)" in the Graphics help file explain the pros and cons.

November 23, 2012 at 02:31 pm - Permalink

I would also opt for sending separate pdfs. In this case you have a vector graphic file, and don't have to worry about resolution. Most magazines will process them in illustrator etc., with makes the publication small in size and nice looking. If you need figures in word by all means, use png or better tiff. But make sure that the dpi (/=resolution) setting is set right, as word will read it and process accordingly (unless you scale).

November 28, 2012 at 07:14 am - Permalink

Are you looking at the onscreen output or the final printed output? The EPS preview word implements is very ugly on either OS X or Windows.

I usually embed igor generated EPS into my word documents, then check the file by rendering the document to pdf or directly printing.

Graphs with huge numbers of data points and lend to large file sizes and long printing times, so it's better to use some raster graphic format. PNG will compress without generating ugly artifacts. TIFF will also do, but generates very large files. I do not recommend jpeg for scientific plots.

I've had a few problems plots looking fuzzy (fine detail loss) in Word if I use Word to scale them. Export the exact size you need so you don't need to scale the graph after it's imported into Word.

300-600 dpi is in the range of fine to overkill. The journal will likely resample the image anyway.

Basic troubleshooting:
Igor: Make sure image export size (hieght/width/resolution) are reasonable. Image looks good in preview/direct to pdf
Printer: If the image is ugly in word, nice in pdf, and ugly printed: uncheck "print as image" settings, update the printer drivers, switch between pcl/postscript if possible
pdf: If the image is ugly in word, ugly in pdf, and nice printed: make sure pdf rasterization settings are not overzealous
Word: Make sure target output is set to 220 ppi (max), check/uncheck compress graphics

November 28, 2012 at 07:40 am - Permalink