VMD-L Mailing List

From: Marc Q. Ma (qma_at_oak.njit.edu)
Date: Fri Feb 04 2005 - 14:58:58 CST

Greetings!

I would like to share with everyone a recent finding about using gimp
software (on Unix) to convert the tga, jpg ... images to eps files.
Here is how you do it: launch gimp, open the file you have (jpeg),
right click on the image and choose to save as .eps file (let system
determine type automatically).

We all love the high quality images that VMD can generate. However, it
is a pin in the neck to try to use these images in latex files. I have
tried to convert the targa (.tga) files to jpeg file using xv, then
convert the jpeg files to eps using jpeg2ps. The quality of the
converted images drop significantly. When you try to use these images
in latex using \includegraphix, the outcome is very disappointing.

The eps file converted using gimp is very very good. Try it and you
will enjoy it!

Or, maybe someday the latex developers and standards committee will
come up with a set of macros to directly handle jpeg, targa .... files
without loss of quality. That day may come ... Before that there is
gimp ...

Or, maybe someday the VMD folks will support directly render images in
eps format... Do not know about their agenda ... Before eps is directly
supported by VMD, there is always gimp ...

Cheers!

Marc
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Marc Q. Ma, Ph.D. | 973-642-4497
Department of Computer Science | 973-596-5777 (fax)
New Jersey Institute of Technology | qma_at_oak.njit.edu
University Heights, Newark, NJ 07102 | http://www.cs.njit.edu/~qma
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