Vector Format
Vector formats store graphics as geometric objects defined by drawing commands. These commands are interpreted by the output device (e.g., a printer) resulting in high quality lines, surfaces, and text. You can resize vector graphics in your target application without losing quality. The vector formats that MATLAB supports are:
The other graphics formats that MATLAB supports are all bitmap formats.
Vector formats are preferable for most 2-D plots and surface plots that are not of great complexity (the complexity is determined by the number of polygon, number of polygons with interpolated shading, number of markers, presence of truecolor images, and other factors). If MATLAB exports the figure to a file using the z-buffer renderer (such as with any figure that uses lighting), MATLAB automatically renders the figure as a bitmap. While you can still export the figure as one of the vector formats, the resulting files actually contains bitmaps and can be quite large. In this case, it is better to use a bitmap format such as TIFF.
Encapsulated PostScript
For many applications, the best format to use is Encapsulated PostScript (EPS). This format provides very high quality output because it is a vector format. In addition, EPS is portable to every platform MATLAB runs on.
The main drawback to the EPS format is that when you print a document in which the EPS graphic is embedded, you must use a PostScript printer, or the graphic will not print. Also, EPS graphic files are not visible in most applications and appear as gray boxes on screen. You can, however, include a TIFF preview in the EPS file, which is visible in most word processing and desktop publishing applications.
[ Previous | Help Desk | Next ]