What's the best image format to save this matlab figure ?

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I need to save thousands of figures that look like this (except without any letters, the final figure is JUST the points):
- The dots are ONLY black, so I don't care about color loss. - I also don't care about how much space it takes up or how fast it takes to load, because I can always convert to a different format later - I do however care about ACCURACY. I don't want to lose any information (already in this PNG some of the points have been groups together into bigger points)
I like the way you can zoom into EPS files and nothing looks pixelated, but I'm not sure how a vector graphic would work with just points. Are there any disadvantages if I choose EPS ?
I'm also wondering whether I should export these figures to files using -nodisplay mode.. because when I have a display, it seems that the image is being printed to the file from the image displayed on the screen (which might have a lower resolution than printing directly from the mathematical data).
I just want to export these files with minimal loss of data !
Thank you =)
  1 Comment
Enrique
Enrique on 27 Feb 2023
You can use the format .svg, for me is the best when I have to write pappers

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Answers (2)

Image Analyst
Image Analyst on 8 Apr 2012
I don't know what EPS is doing. If it's not pixelated but your original is then it must be doing some kind of interpolation and that will make it look smoother than it really it. If you want that, then fine. Window 7 doesn't seem to create nice icons for EPS files like the other formats. I just don't use EPS so I'm not sure of any advantages it has. I use PNG because it is a lossless standard that is becoming more and more widely used.
  1 Comment
Daniel Shub
Daniel Shub on 10 Apr 2012
If you plot a line and export it as png and you zoom in enough eventually the image will look pixelated. If you export it as eps it will never look pixelated.

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Daniel Shub
Daniel Shub on 10 Apr 2012
If you are starting with a 2D matrix of the dot locations, then I would save that matrix and not the figure. If you really want a figure, then go with a vector graphic (eps or pdf). If you try and create an eps file from a bitmap image, the disadvantage is a large file size and slow rendering. It saves and recreates the data set (pixel values) in a lossless manner. The -nodisplay mode should not matter.

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