ImageMagick Problem: Converting from PDF to EPS

[Xin Liu]

On Mon, Dec 21, 2009 at 1:51 AM, Ryan Schmidt <ryandesign at macports.org> wrote:
>
> On Dec 19, 2009, at 10:10, Xin Liu wrote:
>
>> I have a drawing in PDF, which is generated by PDFCreator from a Visio
>> drawing in Windows. When I convert it to eps using "convert a.pdf
>> a.eps", it looks like a low-resolution bitmap and the PDF's page size
>> is kept (i.e., there is a lot of white space). It used to be good,
>> i.e., the produced eps file looks as smooth as the original PDF file,
>> and the large white margin in the original PDF file is eliminated.
>> Does anyone have the same problem? Any clue where the problem is?
>> Since ImageMagick uses ghostscript to handle PDF/eps, it might be a
>> ghostscript problem as well...
>>
>> I've confirmed my PDF file is OK, because the conversion goes well
>> when I use the ImagickMagick bundled with Ubuntu-8.04.
>>
>> My configuration: Snow Leopard running in 32-bit mode, MacPorts-1.8.1,
>> ImageMagick @6.5.8-0_1+q16 (active), ghostscript @8.70_1 (active).
>
> What did you mean, "it used to be good" -- did you mean it worked in a previous version of ImageMagick? or a previous version of Mac OS X? or a different computer?

It worked in a previous version of ImageMagick, but I forgot which
version. Again, I also suspect that the problem may be related to the
current version of ghostscript.

> Can you provide a test image that demonstrates the problem?

A sample pdf: http://www.cs.duke.edu/~xinl/test.pdf
A good eps converted from the pdf with an ImageMagick on a ubuntu
machine: http://www.cs.duke.edu/~xinl/test-good.eps
An eps converted from the pdf with the ImageMagick in macports:
http://www.cs.duke.edu/~xinl/test-bad.eps