How to produce small postscript files from photoshop etc...?

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Bruce Bassett
Posts: 26
Joined: November 24 2004
Affiliation: SAAO/UCT

How to produce small postscript files from photoshop etc...?

Post by Bruce Bassett » November 24 2004

Hi,

I often use photoshop/illustrator etc... to enhance standard ps figures. However, the output ps/eps files are then huge.

The standard answer to this (see e.g. the help pages on the arXiv) is
to save the output as a jpeg and then use binary compression in ps via a utility such as jpeg2ps. The figures can then be included in latex as usual.

However, I have found that the resulting figures sometimes look really bad when viewed in ghostview (i.e at low resolution), but OK in pdf at higher resolution (see e.g. figures in astro-ph/0409207). The low quality does not depend strongly on the initial jpeg quality but appears to occur in the transition to ps (or perhaps in the displaying by ghostview).

Does someone understand the origin of
this or have an alternative way of compressing large ps files which look better viewed at low resolution?

Thanks!
Bruce

Michael Doran
Posts: 41
Joined: November 22 2004
Affiliation: ITP Heidelberg
Contact:

How to produce small postscript files from photoshop etc...?

Post by Michael Doran » November 25 2004

Hi Bruce,

one guess (in linux) is the ps2ps (or eps2eps) command which runs ghostscript and "distilles" the file.
Maybe it's smaller then. Another possibility might be gimp (but then it's pixelized, I guess). Because gimp produces the smallest ps files I know...

Michael

Bruce Bassett
Posts: 26
Joined: November 24 2004
Affiliation: SAAO/UCT

How to produce small postscript files from photoshop etc...?

Post by Bruce Bassett » November 25 2004

Hi Michael,

Thanks. I did try ps2ps but on the already jpeg2ps'd files which didnt make them smaller. I will try without the jpeg step in between...

Cheers
Bruce

Roberto Trotta
Posts: 18
Joined: September 27 2004
Affiliation: Imperial College London
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How to produce small postscript files from photoshop etc...?

Post by Roberto Trotta » December 02 2004

Hi Bruce,

I sometimes use "convert file.ps file.jpg", then xv to get the .ps back.

To get maximum compression, in xv I set it to 8 bit mode, for the ps options remember to use "reduced colors" and in the last screen to tick the "compress" option. This gives usually dramatic compression (from MB's down to a few KB's) wihtout too much loss of quality.

Alessandro Melchiorri
Posts: 129
Joined: September 24 2004
Affiliation: University of Rome
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How to produce small postscript files from photoshop etc...?

Post by Alessandro Melchiorri » December 02 2004

I found that if you first convert the .ps to .pdf with http://www.ps2pdf.com/convert/convert.htm
and then you print the .pdf as .ps you have a much smaller file with good
quality.
(I am sure that there is an easier solution...)

Bruce Bassett
Posts: 26
Joined: November 24 2004
Affiliation: SAAO/UCT

How to produce small postscript files from photoshop etc...?

Post by Bruce Bassett » December 03 2004

Thanks for the suggestions!
bruce

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