>>Date: Sun, 10 Oct 1999 11:46:01 -0700 (PDT)
>>From: Syrus Nemat-Nasser <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>>To: claudio <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>>cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>>Subject: Re: ps too big ???
>>
>>On Sun, 10 Oct 1999, claudio wrote:
>>
>>> Hello, I'm writihg my thesis with Lyx, but I get a problem: I need to
>>> produce images with StarOffice ( they come out as results of a Starcalc
>>> sheet) and to include in the LyX file I can make tho things :
>>> 1) export directly in ps, but it's too large ( 3Mb)
>>> 2) save in tiff (200-300 Kb) and use tiff2ps but the ps is too large (
>>> 3Mb)
>>>
>>> Is possible to reduce the size of the files ps I have with some
>>> compression tool ?
>>
>>Hi Claudio,
>>
>>I have a similar situation, but I don't know if my solution will help you.
>>I have an electromagnetic simulation program that generates very large ps
>>files (up to 80MB) for three-dimensional structures. I use the GIMP to
>>sample the ps file to a desired resolution (this just means that I open
>>the .ps file inside the GIMP). Then, I convert the file to .gif which
>>usually results in a file that is less than 250kB. I then use xfig to
>>create a figure with the .gif file in a picture box, and finally, I export
>>to eps from xfig. The resulting .eps file can be used in LyX. My 50MB
>>ps files become 200kB gifs and 500kB to 1MB eps files. Unfortunately, this
>>may not help to compress your 3MB ps files if they are already efficient.
The memory size of bitmapped/compressed images depends strongly upon the final
dimensions:
if you need a thumbnail image, say 80x60 pixels, it will have a smaller
size than the original one, say 400x300 (that is a good reason to use
specific small images in HTML documents rather that resizing of original ones).
The size of vectorized images is by definition independent of the printed size
(a global scale order changes the size at viewing or printing time).
So
- if the original ps is of the vector kind, nothing can really be done,
unless the used software produces very huge dictionaries of macros which are
not fully used by the figure; in that case I would suggest to try
a conversion to eps using ghostscript: it may rewrite a simpler picture;
- if the original ps is big because bitmapped, convert it to GIF or PNG, then back to
eps, preferably in the final desired size; ImageMagick allows to do this in
batch mode (i.e. without opening the images) quite easily, which is useful
when you have many images. Unless you print in color, you
will convert to greyscale on the fly (-colorspace GRAY option of ImageMagick convert
command).
As a side remark about the original mail, I don't understand why the size of the image
is a problem, once it is converted in EPS: to produce the dvi, LyX only needs the
BoundingBox, the image in only read at viewing or printing time: if the printing
fails,
I would suspect a printer spool problem or a temporary size. Did you check that ?
A good test is to save as LaTeX, run latex alone and chack that the dvi is correct.
Then you may try to print the document page by page
dvips bar -pp1-1
Regards,
--
Jean-Pierre
