Using pcolor in matlab

Question

I'm trying to use matlab's pcolor feature. I would then like to convert the matlab .fig into a pdf. However, whenever I do this, the graphics quality becomes awful. Is there any way around this/ any program I could use to stop this happening. In other words, is there any way to make a matlab pcolor look decent?

Thanks

Answer 1

The best tool for exporting Matlab figures to pdf is export_fig from the Matlab File Exchange (check out the usage examples ).

Note that you will need to install ghostscript on your system.

Answer 2

If you don't want to install export_fig, you could use the “export as” dialog in the GUI, and set the figure to be a vectorized PDF, with zbuffer as the renderer. Set the minimum font settings that you want, and if you really want as much detail as possible preserved, set DPI to 600. If you do that though, be careful to preview before printing because the PDF will be very large. You could also experiment with changing the color space. Maybe it's just buggy on Ubuntu, but I was never able to get Matlab to use the typefaces or font sizes I specified for text labels.

I recommend using export_fig instead because there are better examples for that.