R help - Aug 2008 - Pdf file size for very scatter plots

Dear all,

I am plotting a scatter plot for a large sample (1e+05 ordered pairs).
This produces a large (~5MB) file in a pdf or postscript terminal, and
I am wondering whether there are methods for reducing the size of the
resulting file so that it is easier to include it in a document. I'd
rather stick with pdf or ps as I am using latex.

thanks,
Nazareno

Have you tried using  pch='.'?

Also you might consider using 'hexbin' for creating the scatter plot.

On Fri, Aug 15, 2008 at 12:24 PM, Nazareno Andrade
<nazareno at lsd.ufcg.edu.br> wrote:
> Dear all,
>
> I am plotting a scatter plot for a large sample (1e+05 ordered pairs).
> This produces a large (~5MB) file in a pdf or postscript terminal, and
> I am wondering whether there are methods for reducing the size of the
> resulting file so that it is easier to include it in a document. I'd
> rather stick with pdf or ps as I am using latex.
>
> thanks,
> Nazareno
>
> ______________________________________________
> R-help at r-project.org mailing list
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
> PLEASE do read the posting guide
http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
>


-- 
Jim Holtman
Cincinnati, OH
+1 513 646 9390

What is the problem that you are trying to solve?

I thought running it through latex will compress the pdf - but this post nicely
summarizes some options:

http://tolstoy.newcastle.edu.au/R/e2/help/07/05/17475.html

I personally prefer the pdftk approach* over the ghostscript option**  as the
latter seems to give me a number of problems on Windows XP.

*if you install pdftk (and put it in your search path), after you create
filename.pdf with pdf(), do
pdftk filename.pdf cat output newfilename.pdf compress
or
pdftk filename.pdf cat output newfilename.pdf compress dont_ask

**if you have ghostview installed (and in your search path),
bitmap("filename.pdf",type="pdfwrite")
plot(...)
dev.off()





----- Original Message ----
From: Nazareno Andrade <nazareno at lsd.ufcg.edu.br>
To: r-help <r-help at r-project.org>
Sent: Friday, August 15, 2008 12:46:52 PM
Subject: Re: [R] Pdf file size for very scatter plots

Jim,

Thanks for the answer. Using pch="." reduces the file to ~3MB... Still
large.

I'll look into hexbins, but if I understand it right, it would
'round'
points which are nearby into a same hexagon, right? Couldn't that
result in an inaccurate view of a scatter plot?

Here's the code I'm using:

pdf(); plot(rnorm(1e5), rnorm(1e5), pch = "."); dev.off()

thanks again,
Nazareno

On Fri, Aug 15, 2008 at 12:27 PM, jim holtman <jholtman at gmail.com>
wrote:
> Have you tried using  pch='.'?
>
> Also you might consider using 'hexbin' for creating the scatter
plot.
>
> On Fri, Aug 15, 2008 at 12:24 PM, Nazareno Andrade
> <nazareno at lsd.ufcg.edu.br> wrote:
>> Dear all,
>>
>> I am plotting a scatter plot for a large sample (1e+05 ordered pairs).
>> This produces a large (~5MB) file in a pdf or postscript terminal, and
>> I am wondering whether there are methods for reducing the size of the
>> resulting file so that it is easier to include it in a document.
I'd
>> rather stick with pdf or ps as I am using latex.
>>
>> thanks,
>> Nazareno
>>
>> ______________________________________________
>> R-help at r-project.org mailing list
>> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
>> PLEASE do read the posting guide
http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
>> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
>>
>
>
>
> --
> Jim Holtman
> Cincinnati, OH
> +1 513 646 9390
>
> What is the problem that you are trying to solve?
>
______________________________________________
R-help at r-project.org mailing list
https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.