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Re: What should be a simple task....

  • To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
  • Subject: [mg100666] Re: What should be a simple task....
  • From: Mike Bryniarski <melondisco at gmail.com>
  • Date: Wed, 10 Jun 2009 17:11:44 -0400 (EDT)
  • References: <h0nuoh$bhh$1@smc.vnet.net>

On Jun 10, 4:35 am, "Nelson-Patel, Kristin" <k... at ll.mit.edu> wrote:
> Hi :)
>
> I am an analyst (applied physics and math) who has to present all
> of my work in Power Point briefings, sometimes on paper, sometimes
> electronically. I vastly prefer working in Mathematica to another system;
> however, I'm currently ham strung by my inability to transfer simple
> plots from Mathematica 7 to Power Point 2007 in a way that looks decent.
>
> In previous versions of both, I was able to Copy As: Metafile by right
> clicking on the plot in Mathematica and Paste Special: Metafile in
> Power Point, and all would be well (Ok, I had to tweak line thickness
> settings and fonts in my plots to make them survive the transfer, but
> that was fine).   Now, I have select the whole cell rather than just
> the plot to get the Copy As: metafile option, and I have to go all the
> way to the menu bar to do it (no longer an option on the right click).
> Fine, I can deal with that, but I can't deal with the fact that my simple
> plots look completely ratty now upon pasting into Power Point.
>
> There's all this stair stepping in curves which should be smooth.
> I've played with the PlotPoints option-no effect. I've exported into
> different form ats with varying ImageResolution and imported; Either the
> fonts get screwed up or it looks even worse or there's ugly aliasing or
> no effect on the stair stepping.  I've exported to PDF and snapshot-cop=
ied
> from there; The curves look good, but now the whole image is just a littl=
e
> bit blurry/soft, a little too much to pass muster with my supervisors
> and sponsors.
>
> I'm really getting frustrated now, have spent way too much time on what
> *was* a solved problem before my "upgrades", and beginning to suspect
> that the problem is some import or paste/display setting in Power Point
> that I can't reach.  I really don't want to have two different briefing=
s
> for electronic vs. paper presentation, but I'm a little concerned that's
> where this is heading, or I'm going to have to use the other system to
> make my plots. Which would bea shame.
>
> Has anyone figured this one out yet?  Help, please-I'm crying uncle.
> This is one of those stupid simple problems that also happens to be
> quite fundamental to the ability to make good use of Mathematica.
>
> -Kristin

I've had problems with this too.  Exporting Mathematica graphics into
Office 2007 programs in a vector format is kind of a pain. The best
way to keep the graphics looking good is to keep them in Mathematica.
Depending on your needs you may be able to give your presentations
using Mathematica's built in presentation functionality. It lacks
flashy trasitions and other stuff that makes presentations "pretty"
which may be a priority but it does let you make really clean looking
presentations with raw mathematica graphics. you can even use commands
like Manipulate to support dynamic figures.

If that is not an option for whatever reason you might try using a
raster format like PNG for your graphics.  They are fixed resolution
but they will look good with minimal tweeking of options.  its not
ideal but I dont know of any other way to get antialiased graphics
from Mathematica to Word 2007.
a simple general form that i use for the export command in these
situations is :

Export[ SystemDialogInput["FileSave"], (* graphics go here *),
ImageResolution->(*some number to specify dpi*)]

I'm sorry if I don't really answer your questions but this is as close
to a solution as I have.


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