Note: Fixed in version 10. See Verbeia's answer.
I've upgraded from Mathematica 8 to 9 (which apparently leaves the old version installed and usable which I didn't expect). I see a significant difference in the size of the PDFs produced by 'Save Graphic As', or Export[]
.
For example, with this very simple plot:
Plot[
Abs[Sinc[x]], {x, 0, 4 Pi}
, AxesLabel -> {x, Abs[Sinc[x]]}
, PlotRange -> Full
]
Export["foo8.pdf", %]
I see a pretty reasonable seeming size with Mathematica 8
-rwxrwxrwx 1 Peeter None 35493 Dec 7 12:18 foo8.pdf
But with Mathematica9 the files, even for this very simple plot are very much bigger:
-rwxrwxrwx 1 Peeter None 1550317 Dec 7 12:19 foo9.pdf
(44 times bigger).
Are there any Export[]
options that allow the file size to be reduced? What accounts for the drastic increase in size when using the new Mathematica release (bug or feature)?
I can choose to export in other formats (like PNG), but when I embed a Mathematica generated png in a latex doc, it always looks fuzzy, so I liked the pdf save format (at least when the size was smaller).
Export["foo.pdf",First[ImportString[ExportString[%,"PDF"],"PDF"]]];
However, that's not a real solution. Alternatively, you'll most likely be able to fix the size by opening thePDF
in another application and saving it back toPDF
from there. $\endgroup$