Why does MATLAB crash when I try to print to a high resolution PNG file?

I tried to print my figure window to a 300 dot-per-inch (DPI) PNG file, and MATLAB crashed.

Answer 1

[MathWorks Support Team]

This bug has been fixed in Release 14 Service Pack 3 (R14SP3). For previous product releases, read below for any possible workarounds:

MATLAB 5.3 (R11) is unable to handle printing a figure window to a high resolution PNG file. If you try to print it as a 300 DPI file using the command:

print -dpng -r300 <filename>

it will crash. If you try the same command on MATLAB 6.0 (R12), and your computer is fast enough, it will print the file. However, when you try to exit MATLAB will crash. If your computer is not fast enough, it will crash before printing the file. This problem is sporadic, however.

A solution is to reduce the resolution of the picture you're trying to print. Tests have shown that it works on 72 DPI resolution.