[R-sig-eco] Publication quality graphics in R

[Phil Novack-Gottshall]

[Apologies if this is a duplicate; I seem to be having e-mail problems.]

I've also had trouble dealing with formatting 
issues from R to a format acceptable for 
journals.  But I found a really useful 
recommendation from Cadmus, the art folks for 
PNAS.  Here's a useful site: 
http://cpc.cadmus.com/da/tutorials.jsp and 
http://art.cadmus.com/da/instructions/ps80_win.jsp 
They're not specific to R, but there's some good general advice.

I, too, tend to save images as a .pdf 
(specificying final size and resolution), and 
then convert to TIF or EPS using the following (also advised from Cadmus):

For EPS:
Once you have a PDF file, you can open it with 
the “full” version of Acrobat and then do a “Save 
as EPS” – or – you can open your PDF with Illustrator and then “Save as EPS.”

For TIF:
Open the PDF file from within Photoshop. This 
will allow you to determine resolution 
(typically, 600 DPI is ideal for most figures). 
While in Photoshop, go to the menu and click 
"Layer>Flatten Image", crop (trim) excess white 
space around the figure, scale it to the correct 
size, and then "Save As
" a TIF file using LZW (not JPEG or ZIP) compression.

This usually works for the journals I've dealt 
with.  And a benefit of saving directly as PDF is 
you can use the alpha functionality in 
color.palette() to set transparency, which is 
really useful when having overlaying colors.  (To 
my knowledge, alpha is not allowed when plotting in the R window.)

Phil


> > I'd like to hear from the list, how folks specify and export presentation
> > quality and publication quality graphics with R.  I've had problems
> > when exporting graphics using the copy-to-clipboard option (both bitmap
> > and metafile)
> > and also when saving them as jpgs.  They almost always seem to look a
> > little funny
> > (e.g. pixelation, symbols coming out distorted etc.).  The only option
> > that I've had
> > much success with is saving them as pdf's, but that format is less than
> > ideal when trying
> > to incorporate a graphic into another document (e.g. Word or Powerpoint),
> > and is often
> > not the format requested by journals.
> >

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
   Phil 
Novack-Gottshall 
pnovackg at westga.edu

   Assistant Professor
   Department of Geosciences
   University of West Georgia
   Carrollton, GA 30118-3100
   Phone: 678-839-4061
   Fax: 678-839-4071
   http://www.westga.edu/~pnovackg
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~