Random Wisdom

Graphics format conversion

by on Dec.09, 2009, under LaTeX, Linux, Software

Up until now I have been using the ‘convert‘ tool that comes with ImageMagick to switch between image formats — mainly for creating EPS files from JPG/PNG (raster format) files for use with LaTeX. Then I came across sam2p.

It is a light-weight utility that does one thing only and it does it well: convert between image formats. I’ve been using it for a while now and find that it can greatly reduce files sizes with minimal drop in quality. I’ve even used it to process existing EPS files just to get the reduction in file size. Best of all, it is multi-platform — executables are available for both Windows and Linux on the project homepage.

Goodbye convert and hello sam2p!

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2 Comments for this entry

  • used cls

    I’m glad that this is available for both Windows and Linux. I’ve used this tool before however, I have found that the quality is greatly reduced. Has anyone else had this issue?

  • Mostafa

    The apparent loss of quality is perhaps due to the fact that sam2p creates raster EPS images — as indicated by Q/A #48 in the README file:

    http://pts.szit.bme.hu/sam2p/README.txt

    I work around this issue by starting with a source image of larger dimensions than I actually need in the final document.

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