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#### A.5.2.2 Plot Export Window

Plot export window

The Plot Export Window can be reached with the Export plot to file () toolbar button in any of the layer plot windows.

You can select a file in the usual way, and save the plot in one of the following graphics formats:

png
  PNG bitmap.
gif
  GIF bitmap; note the number of colours is limited to 256.
jpeg
  JPEG bitmap; note that this is a lossy format, better suited to photographs than plots, and colours will be blurred.
pdf
  Portable Document Format; in most cases this vector format gives pretty good output, in particular text will be rendered properly.
eps
  Encapsulated PostScript; PostScript cannot handle transparency, which means that in some cases the output will come out wrong. PostScript files can also be very large if there are many data points.
eps-gzip
  Just like eps, but the output is gzipped before output.

There are two additional controls on the right hand side of this window:

File Format
  Selects the output file format as above. The default setting is (auto), which guesses what format you want to use from the filename, and which usually does the right thing.
Force Bitmap
  This option only has an effect for vector graphics formats (PDF and PostScript). If selected, it draws the data contents of the plot as a pixel map and embeds that into the output file rather than plotting each point in the output. This may make the output less beautiful (round markers will no longer be perfectly round), but it may result in a much smaller file if there are very many data points. Plot annotations such as axis labels will not be affected - they are still drawn as vector text. Note that in some cases (e.g. use of the auto or density shading modes) this kind of pixellisation will happen in any case.

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TOPCAT - Tool for OPerations on Catalogues And Tables
Starlink User Note253
TOPCAT web page: http://www.starlink.ac.uk/topcat/
Author email: m.b.taylor@bristol.ac.uk
Mailing list: topcat-user@bristol.ac.uk