ImageMagick Problem: Converting from PDF to EPS

[Xin Liu]

On Mon, Dec 21, 2009 at 11:10 PM, Xin Liu <smilerliu at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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

I forgot to mention that the ImageMagick on an ubuntu machine is an
older version (7:6.3.7.9.dfsg1-2ubuntu1.1).