John Iversen

Hello from the author.

I'm sorry people are having trouble with newer versions of Matlab. They keep changing things under the hood, in the name of progress.

I'm willing to help try to fix things, but it'll only work if you the users send more _details_. For starters:
What exactly doesn't work?
What is the error (if there is one)?
What do you expect vs. what do you see?
Important: Please send me simple demo code that demonstrates your problem. Simplify your code to the minimum that still shows the problem. This is invaluable.

It seems like a number of problems are focussed around the mapping toolbox. Please verify if you see the same problems if you instead use the standard graphics functions? That is, replace contourm and scatterm with contour and scatter, for example.

I would like to keep freezeColors working for everyone, but can only do so with your help.

You can send me these things off list at iversen AT nsi.edu.

Thanks,
John

== from the Author ==

Hi everyone. Happy New Year!

I wanted to belatedly comment on the problem people are having with eps/pdf exports ending up with pixellated text and lines. It's a bummer. Unfortunately, I believe this is an underlying feature of Matlab. Matlab has three methods for rendering plots, and this has an effect on printing to files, too. See "Impact of Rendering Method on the Output" at http://www.mathworks.com/help/techdoc/creating_plots/f3-103236.html#f3-103452

In short, even if you print to a vector format like 'eps' or 'pdf' matlab will save _bitmaps_! The only exception is when using render mode 'painters'. If you open these resulting eps/pdf in a vector program like Illustrator you'll see the file is in fact a bunch of bitmap 'strips'. It would be so much better if Matlab saved the image parts of your figure as bitmaps but kept the lines and text as crisp vectors. Please contact Mathworks to complain/suggest this.

=Workarounds=

First, try

>> set(gcf,'renderer','painters')

on your plots and see if you like the result. If so, you're golden: With the 'painters' renderer will you get what you want--a vector format output with text (and presumably lines--I haven't verified this) as vector objects. However, you will lose many effects like transparency, lighting, etc, and some more advanced plots you will see an error as they cannot be rendered in this mode.

Otherwise, the workaround is to specify a _resolution_ when you print to eps or pdf:

>> print(gcf,'-depsc','-r600','file.eps')

It'll still just output a bitmap, but at least the text and contours will be rendered smoothly (at 600 ppi in this case. Use a higher number for even smoother results). The default is in fact '-r72' which is why you have been getting pixellated text and lines.

In this case, there's really no point in printing to eps or pdf, so you might as well use 'tiff' or another true bitmap format:

>> print(gcf,'-dtiff','-r600','file.tiff')

I tested this out on Koos Spee's nice example, and using R2010a. Hopefully this generalizes and helps people out. Let me know if so/not. Thanks, John

PS. Thank you for bug fixes (Mircea & Subhaneil). I'll upload a new version eventually...

Hello, I have uploaded a new version of freezeColors.

Changes: The main change is in documentation, finalizing the suggestion to use cbfreeze to freeze colorbars. There is also a fix to a problem in which caxis was changed in contourf plots.

I would enjoy hear about the kind of work users of this function are doing, and see examples of its use. (my email address is contained in the functions).

Thank you, John Iversen

This is so useful.