Copy figure - bad quality

Hi all,

I have some problem with the quality of copied figure. If I plot something and then I chose edit-copy figure, no problems, I can paste them in word and the quality is good. BUT if I do some modifications on the figure, for example I add some text or shapes, then if I do copy figure, the quality of the pasted image in word is lower.. For example it's impossible to read well the axis label.. You have any idea of the solution for this problem?

Thank you

Answer 1

[Vinh Ho]

Go to copy options and choose "Metafile" for clipboard format. The resolution is pefect, alghouth it said "may loose information" but i did not have that problem yet.

[Muhammad Zayed]

The quality of the imported figure was greatly improved after I did that! Thanks much!

[XIAOHUA HUA]

Hum, really makes no sense to me.

3 options:

1, Metafile (may lose information)

2, Preserve information (metafile if possible)

3, Bitmap

To me, option 1 seems the worst choice in terms of picture quality but actually not at all.

[Mario Rossi]

what's the point of commenting a 3 years old comment on a 10 years old thread?? moreover with a comment without any useful content.

[Vincent Masabiar masabair]

Thanks..........choosing "Metafile" for clipboard format worked for me!

[Nick]

It does not seem this is an option on Mac. Are there any alternatives for Mac?

Answer 2

[Malcolm Lidierth]

See

http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/23629-exportfig

[Image Analyst]

Someone else just asked about saving and I referred him to the FAQ: http://matlab.wikia.com/wiki/FAQ#How_do_I_save_my_figure.2C_axes.2C_or_image.3F_I.27m_having_trouble_with_the_built_in_MATLAB_functions. (Make sure the final dot is included in the URL). The FAQ also which mentions export_fig(), which is the consistently the most downloaded File Exchange submission. I guess that's why questions on saving figures are the MOST commonly asked question - we get 1 to 3 a day or so.

Answer 3

[Richard]

try saving the figure from matlab as a .jpg file by typing

        ff =(C:\My Documents);
        fnout = [ff, '\FigureName', num2str(1,'%.2d'), '.jpg'];
        print('-djpeg','-r150',fnout);

This will then save the figure in my documents. Then in word go to inser--> picture.

If you want really high quality figures, you should save your figures as .eps files, but I dont think that word accepts these.

[Richard]

Try using:

http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/23629

Answer 4

[Mario Rossi]

Thank you for the answers.

@lestyn: I can manually export in jpg, but the situation is the same, even worse maybe..

@Malcom: yes, I've already tried export_fig, but nothing changes.

The key point is that I don't understand why the copied figure changes between the situation "figure without any change", and the "figure after that I add some shapes"... It should be the same!

[Oliver Woodford]

An example script would help a lot.

Answer 5

[Malcolm Lidierth]

This will not improve the image like export_fig but it does reproduce what's on screen -so if if you do not see grotty graphics on screen this may help.

It calls

this=MUtil.getFigureHWLWContainer(fh);

which is defined in Project Waterloo http://sourceforge.net/projects/waterloo/, and returns a reference to the MATLAB heavyweight/lightweight container but you could get that in other ways e.g. with Yair Altman's findjobj.

Dependent jars are part of the standard MATLAB distribution and are on the static javaclasspath.

MATLAB seem to build graphics in an offscreen buffer then paste a bitmap into the Java AWT Canvas. Here, that is replaced with an Apache Batik SVGCanvas. The MALAB graphics will be embedded as a bitmap in the file.

function SaveAsSVG(fh, str)
% SaveAsSVG saves a MATLAB figure to an SVG file
% Example:
%     SaveAsSVG(figurehandle, filename)
% where filename is the fully qualified name of the file to write.
%----------------------------------------------------------------------
% Part of Project Waterloo and the sigTOOL Project at King's College
% London.
% Author: Malcolm Lidierth 03/11
% Copyright © The Author & King's College London 2011-
% Email: sigtool (at) kcl.ac.uk
% ---------------------------------------------------------------------

import java.io.File;
import java.io.FileNotFoundException;
import java.io.FileOutputStream;
import java.io.OutputStreamWriter;
import java.io.UnsupportedEncodingException;
import java.io.Writer;
import java.util.logging.Level;
import java.util.logging.Logger;
import org.apache.batik.dom.GenericDOMImplementation;
import org.apache.batik.svggen.SVGGeneratorContext;
import org.apache.batik.svggen.SVGGraphics2D;
import org.apache.batik.svggen.SVGGraphics2DIOException;
import org.w3c.dom.DOMImplementation;

this=MUtil.getFigureHWLWContainer(fh);
if nargin<2 || isempty(str)
    str='untitled.svg';
end
[folder filename ext]=fileparts(str);
if isempty(ext);ext='.svg';end
if isempty(folder);folder=pwd();end
str=[fullfile(folder, filename), ext];
thisFile = File(str);
OutputStream = [];
try
    OutputStream =FileOutputStream(thisFile);
catch ex
end
domImpl = GenericDOMImplementation.getDOMImplementation();
svgNS = 'http://www.w3.org/2000/svg';
document = domImpl.createDocument(svgNS, 'svg', []);
svgGenerator = SVGGraphics2D(document);
svgGenerator.scale(1,1);
this.paint(svgGenerator);
try
    out = OutputStreamWriter(OutputStream, 'UTF-8');
catch ex
end
try
    svgGenerator.stream(out, true);
catch ex
end

end

Answer 6

[Mario Rossi]

if I have to use this long method, so it's much faster to copy and paste in paint or some kind of image editing program... Thank you anyway!

Answer 7

[John Petersen]

Save it as a .emf or .png file. These retain image quality for graphs and plots with lines.

Answer 8

[Albert Yam]

This might just be copy/paste but, try

print -s -dmeta