[R-SIG-Mac] How to put nice R graphics into powerpoint

[Andrew Beckerman]

Denis - I use the following rather convoluted method with OS 10.3.8,  
Illustrator CS, and R2.0.1.

command-c copies a figure from the quartz window.  Open this file in  
preview and export it as a pdf file (don't know why i do this....).   
use illustrator, and the command <place> from the file menu to insert  
it in a new document.  Choose <save for microsoft office> from the file  
menu in illustrator. this produces a png file that plays nicely, cross  
platform, with Word and PP. variations abound, but the goal is to get  
something presentable in illustrator and use its save for office  
option.....

I noticed that preview has a png choice from export, but I've not yet  
played around with its options to see if I can get the same quality  
that the save for Microsoft Office option produces in Illustrator.

Cheers
andrew


On 10 Feb 2005, at 15:50, Denis Chabot wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I really like the nice vector-based pdf graphics I get in R.
>
> However, PowerPoint seems to be unable to read them as vector graphics  
> and rasterizes them, making them quite "fuzzy" and ugly. Granted, the  
> problem lies with Microsoft, but in the mean time what is the best  
> workaround? I'd like to do better than producing png from within R  
> (especially that only my iMac has X11, my very old PowerBook does  
> not).
>
> I am still able to show vector graphics in pict format in PowerPoint.  
> So it should be possible to extract the vectorized plot from the pdf  
> and save it as pict, still vectorized.
>
> However opening the R-produced pdf in Illustrator and saving as pict  
> produces a file quite a bit bigger than the original pdf, suggesting  
> it was saved as raster pict instead of vector pict. It shows up in  
> Powerpoint just as ugly as if it was inserted directly as pdf. This is  
> true with Illustrator CS (aka v11 I think) used either under 10.2.8 or  
> 10.3.7. It is also true when using GraphicConverter 5 and Preview  
> (Jaguar's version, I think it is also true with the Panther version)  
> to go from pdf to pict.
>
> I fired up Canvas (old, version 8) and it did manage to save something  
> that was vectorized (i.e. very sharp when viewing at 400% in  
> PowerPoint) but the empty circles I used as symbols were not filled  
> blacks, the dashes of dashed lines had become "wiggly", text  
> orientation was unacceptably changed, etc. etc.
>
> So does anyone know of a technique to produce vector graphics that  
> insert nicely in PowerPoint, either directly from R or by converting a  
> pdf produced by R into something else?
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Denis Chabot
>
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Dr. Andrew Beckerman
Department of Animal and Plant Sciences, University of Sheffield,
Alfred Denny Building, Western Bank, Sheffield S10 2TN, UK
ph +44 (0)114 222 0026; fx +44 (0)114 222 0002
http://www.shef.ac.uk/beckslab
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