printeps

This works around MATLABs tendency to call all fonts 'Helvetica' in .eps files.

Description

When you export a figure to .eps in MATLAB, it will only use a small number of allowed fonts, even if the user has changed these fonts to something specific to their system. In most cases, you'll end up with 'Helvetica' specified in the resulting eps file. That is, if you import this file into Illustrator and have no font exactly called 'Helvetica' then you will end up substituting something else for it, often times doing bizarre things to your kerning, etc. like moving your subscripts to Siberia.

This script writes the .eps as usual, but figures out what font you actually used in the figure and does a find and replace to place your font (presumably actually resident on your system) back into the file. Currently this does not discriminate between the axis font and other text fonts in the figure (i.e., the title and added text), so everything gets changed to the axis font.

This is just a workaround until Mathworks decides their .eps exporting is problematic.

• MATLAB release: MATLAB 7 (R14)

[Hannah S]

I haven't checked it thoroughly, but it solved my problem - thanks!

[Maxim Ts]

Thanks. It solves the problem!

[L Matthews]

Thank you,this has been driving me nuts. Why cant They sort real issues like this out.

[Dario Redaelli]

I have exeprienced continuous problems to introduce matlab .eps files in latex ducments! You provided a simple solution, and exactly what I was looking for! Thank you very much.

[Ken Campbell]

Simple, but it works. Thanks for solving this annoying problem.

[J W]

works like a charm

[Ted S]

Thank you, I assumed this is how MATLAB should have worked, and I was confused why I was having problems.... Works great with this.

[Andrey Kan]

 

[Nick Gravish]

I work with eps figures in adobe illustrator and it has been a continual pain reconfiguring the fonts from matlab exported eps files. Thanks for the function.

One comment for illustrator users. Adobe illustrator (at least on my system) uses the times new roman font TimesNewRomanPSMT, so embedding the actual font name "Times New Roman" returned from get(gca,'FontName') still gives an error in illustrator. My workaround was to hard code actualfont = 'TimesNewRomanPSMT' since I always work with times. Just a heads up for anyone in a similar position.

[Céldor]

 

[Terrance Nearey]

Thanks Jose for saving me some time finding out what Matlab should make clear in documentation. (Wish I'd spotted your contribution a couple of days ago!). The fonts actually supported in PRINT or SAVEAS in espc2 formats is apparently version- and platform-dependent.
On MATLAB Mac OS X Version: 10.6.7 Build: 10J869, the only fonts I could find that wound up in eps files were these: 'Courier' 'Helvetica' 'Palatino' 'Symbol' 'Times' 'Times New Roman' 'Zapf Dingbats'

Both Times New Roman and Times showed up as 'Times-Roman' in the eps file, but at least they weren't changed to 'Helvetica'.

[Alexandra]