On Fri, Jul 4, 2008 at 3:47 PM, Robin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I have some figures prouced from Matlab using imagesc command. An
> example is here:
> http://acrids.robince.net/robince/simA_theta1.pdf
>
> This should be rectangular grayscale blocks. It shows up correctly in
> acrobat. However in Preview and Skim the image is very blurred - the
> boundaries between the rectangular regions are no longer clear.
> Preview is much worse than skim (completely smoothed image) - with
> Skim you can make out some of the structure but it is blurred.
>
> A more knowledgable friend informs me:
>
>> Seems matlab tries exporting the centres of imagesc graphs as a teeny
>> tiny bitmapped graphic which then scaled up. This is pretty much the
>> definition of a pathological case of bitmap scaling for any algorithm
>> - with more pathology the smarter the algorithm - and betrays
>> imagesc's origins as part of the bitmap manipulation toolchain.
>
> Since there is a considerable difference between Preview and Skim I
> was wondering if there might be a hidden option for pdfkit somewhere
> that could cause either Preview or Skim to display the image properly
> - or whether anything else might be done to get either application to
> show imagesc plots correctly?


Some updated information from my friend:

> hmmn, looks like os x ignores the "Interpolate" dictionary entry for
> postscript images. I've tried explicitly setting it to "false", the
> default, by hacking up a file exported from matlab and it merrily
> ignores it. My postscript fu is weak these days, so I may be wrong.
>
> As pretty much nothing sets this flag, ignoring it is almost certainly
> the right thing to do to make all pdf and ps files look beautiful...
> except when it isn't. From reading the red book the reason for the
> interpolation flag was to be able to explicitly turn /on/
> interpolation in newer devices that supported it as it is pretty
> brutal computationally (by 1990s standards) and would hammer old
> hardware like printers. The specs sort of imply that in an ideal world
> interpolation would always be used, so MATLAB's dependence on its
> absence is pretty bogus.

So I guess the question is - is it possible to make Skim respect the
'Interpolate' setting?

Cheers

Robin

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