Saving MATLAB figures as PDF with quality 300 DPI, centered

Question

I want to save a MATLAB figure as PDF, with quality 300 DPI, and centered.

So far I managed to save it, but the image appears cropped. I changed the page type to A3 and kind of solves the problem, but I am looking for something more elegant. I am doing it from the GUI, but maybe from the command line is easier in MATLAB.

Is there any package or script that makes this (fundamental task for publications and papers) a bit easier?

Bombardon

Answer 1

Try using the following command:

print -painters -dpdf -r300 test.pdf

You will, of course, already have to have a file named test.pdf in the current directory.

Some notes on the -commands as well.

• -painters: this specifies the use of the painters alogrithm for the exporting.
• -dpdf: specifies a vector image, specially a pdf in this case. This is through Ghostscript.
• -r300: specifies a 300 dpi resolution. -r400 would be 400 dpi and so on.

On an off note. I tend to just save the figure as a high DPI tiff image and import that tiff into another program where I actually assemble my figure(s) for the paper. I tend to lean towards CorelDraw personally.

Kassia

Oh and it almost slipped my mind. You might have to set paper position, paper position mode and paper orientation prior to printing if you end up not getting a centered image and such. This would also allow you to format it to a greater extent if so desired. – Kassia

Answer 2

I would recommend to check the exportfig package

exportfig(gcf, path_to_file, 'format','pdf','Resolution', 300 )

also, you can check fig package, which is nice to call before the exportfig:

figure
plot(x,y)
fig
exportfig(gcf, path_to_file, 'format','pdf','Resolution', 300 )    

Courthouse