[R] scatterplot of 100000 points and pdf file format

John jwdougherty at mcihispeed.net
Wed Nov 24 18:37:05 CET 2004


On Wednesday 24 November 2004 07:34, Witold Eryk Wolski wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I want to draw a scatter plot with 1M  and more points and save it as pdf.
> This makes the pdf file large.
> So i tried to save the file first as png and than convert it to pdf.
> This looks OK if printed but if viewed e.g. with acrobat as document
> figure the quality is bad.
>
> Anyone knows a way to reduce the size but keep the quality?
>
I would strongly suggest a different method to present the data such as a 
contour plot or 3D bar plot.  An XY plot with a million points is unlikely to 
be readable unless it is produced as a large format print.  At 200 DPI 
printed, 1,000,000 discrete points requires a minimum of a 5 inch (12.7          
cm) by 5 inch area.  Besides, other than being visually overwhelming, what 
information would such a plot offer a viewer?

John




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