Curtis Osterhoudt wrote:
I'm currently producing documents using LyX, in which graphics are often XFig figures. I like the fact that LaTeX fonts can be embedded in such figures, and look great when the final document is produced*. However, if such a figure is relatively complicated (for example, a large color plot of experimental data in which there's lots of small detail), the final .pdf (using pdflatex) from LyX usually has quite a bit of detail lost in the figure (small details seem "averaged out" and therefore blurry), whereas a .dvi or postscript document usually seems to retain most of the detail of the original graphic. Is this because of a convoluted conversion path, where at some (maybe more than one) step, some graphics detail is lost? Is there a way to possibly fix this?
As I understood you, you insert the graphics as EPS in LyX and produce then the PDF via pdflatex. I also use pdflatex for the PDF-output but insert all graphics as PDF. This has the advantage that the compilation process is much faster because JPG, PNG, and PDF-graphics can directly be embedded into a PDF so that no conversion step is needed. This increases the compilation time and avoids your problem.
A very good EPS -> PDF converter is Ghostscript (and of course Acrobat). regards Uwe
