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macoslatexpostscript

PostScript files from latex blurred

I use Mac OS X's Preview to view pdf and PostScript files. However some ps files generated with latex appear blurred, for example,

alt text http://img261.imageshack.us/img261/4686/picture1ky5.png

Is there a way to solve this issue?

Solution

  • I've been bothered by this too, so I looked it up just now. [Anyone: Please edit this answer if it's wrong.] As the others have said,

    1. it's probably just the viewer (Preview), and printing it will look fine. Nevertheless, if you're trying to read it on screen, "it will look fine in print" is not much of a consolation. :)
    2. The problem happens because Preview converts from PS to PDF before displaying it. (This "blurry" problem is also common in PDF files that have been generated from PS.) The best fix is to use pdflatex directly.

    If you must go through PostScript, see the Quality of PDF from PostScript at the UK TeX FAQ, which points to a few common reasons why the PDF might be fuzzy:

    • The wrong type of fonts in PDF: This is apparently the most common in older versions of PDF viewers (e.g. before Adobe Reader 6, released in mid-2003). The problem is that dvips's default is to embed Type 3 fonts, and the PDF viewer probably does a bad job of displaying bitmapped fonts. So force the PS file to use Type 1 fonts, by generating it as:

      dvips -Ppdf myfile -o myfile.ps

    • Fonts go fuzzy when you switch to T1: If you have \usepackage[T1]{fontenc}, that might be a problem.("Note that the font encoding T1 has nothing directly to do with the font format Type 1".) There are fixes.

    • a couple of other unlikely reasons, such as Ghostscript being too old.

    Also, look at the testflow package, which is a ‘diagnostic suite which is designed to test LaTeX "print work flow" and to provide lots of helpful information [...]’.

    Of course, if you're not generating the PS yourself, then the simple answer is that Preview sucks, and you should use a better PostScript viewer instead, e.g. install gv through MacPorts or Fink, or MacGSView from here, or MacGhostView, or ($22) PostView.