I second Tom's comment; this is excellent!
In response to Tom's P.S:
This is an interesting thought and one that surprises me. I find that
generating and editing a particular image (to add image labels, ect) can reduce
the quality substantially, especially if the image is a Raster. I've
experienced this with saving IDV PNG's, then adding on the label via gimp. I
think the crux of "publication quality" is the ability to save the IDV whole
image, including fonts, as either a vector graphic or PostScript (SVG, EPS,
PDF). This will allow for some minor editing (without loss) and is the
preferred file format for submission for publication (they convert the document
to LaTeX which likes EPS/PDF).
Attached are two images from GrADs, one saved using the PRINTIM call to save as
a PNG, the other EPS then converted to PDF. The difference, especially with
font, is what makes using PostScript so powerful compared to the Raster image
counter parts. Not to mention you can zoom in and out with barely any quality
loss of the PDF image.
V/R,
Stefan
Stefan Cecelski
Ph.D. Candidate and Graduate Research Assistant
AOSC Department: University of Maryland College Park
2343 Computer and Space Sciences Building(CSS #224)
http://www.atmos.umd.edu/~cecelski/
cecelski@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
On Jun 4, 2012, at 9:35 PM, Tom Whittaker wrote
> Yuan & Julien --
>
> Fantastic!
>
> There is "just one more" area -- the user wants to be able to control
> the fonts for...well, everything. I think mostly we just need to
> expose some controls to the user, since the "default font" does not
> present itself "good enough".
>
> Keep up the great work!!
>
> tom
>
> p.s. I bumped into one of our scientists at the airport when I was
> going to the PolComm meeting. His take on "publication quality
> graphics" was that none of the generator applications (IDL, Matlab,
> IDV, etc) was good enough -- instead, he creates the pictures and then
> uses gimp to put on the labels "just the way I want them". His
> philosophy is that he might make a hundred pictures while doing his
> research, but he needs to pick just 2 or 3 for publication, so he's
> willing to take "the extra few minutes" to use a real graphics program
> to produce just what he wants....which is not necessarily what "some
> program" does. Interesting perspective, eh?
>
> On Mon, Jun 4, 2012 at 4:23 PM, Julien Chastang <chastang@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
>> IDV Developers,
>>
>> We have been making improvements in the area of publication quality graphics
>> that are summarized in the attached image.
>>
>> In particular, we now have the ability to capture multiple panel images at
>> once obviating the need for 3rd party image processing tools. Also, we now
>> have a lat/lon axis labeling capability which can be important for journal
>> figures.
>>
>> -Julien & Yuan
>>
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>
>
>
> --
> Tom Whittaker
> University of Wisconsin-Madison
> Space Science & Engineering Center (SSEC)
> Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Satellite Studies (CIMSS)
> 1225 W. Dayton Street
> Madison, WI 53706 USA
> ph: +1 608 262 2759
