| Printing and Exporting Figures with MATLAB | |
Choosing a Setting
You may need to determine your resolution requirements through experimentation, but you can also use the following guidelines.
For Printing
The default resolution of 150 dpi is normally adequate for typical laser-printer output. However, if you are preparing figures for high quality printing, such as a textbook or color brochures, you may want to use 200 or 300 dpi.
For Exporting
If exporting your figure, base your decision on the resolution supported by the final output device. For example, if you will import your figure into a word processing document and print it on a printer that supports a maximum resolution setting of 300 dpi, you may want to export your figure using 300 dpi to get a precise one-to-one correspondence between pixels in the file and dots on the paper.
Limits of Resolution Setting
MATLAB accepts any resolution setting, but when printing, your setting is limited by the printer's capabilities.
Printing. For example, if you set the resolution to 600 dpi, and the printer's highest capability is 300 dpi, the figure will print at 300 dpi.
If you use the Windows Document Properties dialog box to set resolution, only the resolution settings supported by the printer are available. If you use the print command or the UNIX user interface, you can set the resolution to any value.
Exporting. Export file formats do not have resolution limits.
Impact of Resolution on Size and Memory Needed
Resolution affects file size and memory requirements. For both printing and exporting, the higher the resolution setting, the longer it takes for MATLAB or your printer to render your figure.
For an explanation of how resolution and other settings affect the file size of an exported figure, see Size of Output Files from Bitmap or Vector Formats.
| | Default Resolution and When You Can Change It | How to Set the Resolution | |