What is the highest quality export for Spotfire visualizations?

Question

I have a question regarding high quality exports from spotfire to PDF . I read on Spotfire support page that to obtain highest quality exports for visualizations you should select vectors (instead of rastar ). They still provide better quality than rastar graphics with maximum quality (5 out of 5). However, when I export these images to PDF, the quality is relatively low. Is there a way I can increase the quality? Would it help to select eg PPT exports? I think manual screenshots are still better in quality, but more timeconsuming. We are looking for end-user friendly interface.

Furthermore, if your table is longer and you use slider, what is the recommended way of exporting such a graphic?

Thanks a lot.

Answer 1

raster graphics are generally lower quality. jpeg, for example, is a raster format, where each pixel in the image is coded to a specific color; if you resize the image, it becomes blurry or loses detail.

vector format defines points, lines, and shapes that make up an image. when you scale the image up or down, there is no guesswork trying to blend pixels -- instead the points are recalculated to whatever size. for example, fonts are usually vector format, which is what allows them to be scaled up or down to any size.

the quality of the vector image may be low due to the zoom settings on your PDF viewer (although the image can be scaled to any size, your screen still relies on pixels to display it), but it is the most possible detail. if you zoom in you will probably see an increase in quality.

manual screenshots probably look "best" because there is no scaling or resizing involved. you can export to PNG (raster) image format to get the same effect.

you will not see an increase in quality by exporting to Powerpoint. either you will export it as a raster image to a PPT slide (default settings) or you will export it as a vector using the "As Editable Image" checkbox (which allows you to modify the image in PPT).

what is your end goal? Spotfire is best suited for viewing in the Desktop or Web Player applications, otherwise you lose a lot of features like interactivity, (potentially) live date. if you have to make a lot of exports maybe it is easier to simply provide a link to the analysis?

to your final question, Spotfire is not very good at table exports. I have had some luck with increasing the page size (A4 or A5, for example) and using Landscape over Portrait. again, I recommend to view it in the application.