Re: small graphics in Ferret

[Billy Kessler <William.S.Kessler@xxxxxxxx>]

Hi Mark -

You should not be using the FRAME command to produce graphics
for printing. I think that is your main problem. Don't think
about pixels in the printing context. Instead, save metafiles,
which are vector commands that retain full resolution at any
scale, and use Fprint to turn them into postscript (then
perhaps distill to make them pdf). In that case you don't worry
about the window size at all. Make them in a full-sized window,
since the postscript output is scaleable.

To make metafiles:

yes? set mode meta
yes? ....all your plot commands ....
yes? ppl clsplt

Then outside Ferret you will find a file metafile.plt.
Use Fprint:

> Fprint -o filename.ps [other options] metafile.plt

This will produce a scaleable postscript rendition of your figure.
Try the command Fprint alone to see the options. Very often it is
better to use the "-p portrait" option to force the plot to be on
a vertical page to require less manipulation for publication.

A few hints about producing graphics for publication where they
will be reduced greatly in size:

1. Axis/contour labels generally will have a minimum size of 1.5mm 
in height. Use the PPL AXLSZE command to adjust your label sizes.

2. Very thin lines might turn out to be too thin when reduced.
Several strategies can avoid this problem:
Specify your plot axes to be the final size you want: PPL AXLEN,width,height
Specify the line width for axes/labels and contours to be thicker: PPL PEN,0,7; PPL PEN,1,7
Edit the postscript out of Fprint to increase the line widths:
   In a text editor, change all occurrences of "1.000000 lw" to "2.000000 lw",
   or perhaps "3.000000 lw".
   
There shouldn't be any problem with colors blurring once you are working
with postscript.

Billy K

> Hello!
>
> I'm trying to build some graphs for publication, and so far Ferret has
> not produced graphics (shade plots, mostly) that scale well or can scale
> to be small enough.  The fonts seem to get crunched too much as well as
> the colors start to blur together somewhat.  I need for the graphics to
> be not much larger than 3 inches printed (maybe about 300x300 pixels on
> screen).  Are there any tricks to get Ferret to produce clean graphics
> at that size?  I've tried the frame command with the window sized to the
> right dimensions and also tried a larger window that I used graphics
> software to scale it down after "framing" it.  I just wish they weren't
> gif files.  If Matlab is the better answer, let me know because I
> already have some ideas on that front too.  But Ferret is faster at
> generating the graphs without so much programming.
>
> Thanks!
>
> Mark Carson
> OCRD / PMEL