MATLABs new graphics engine, HG2, fails to properly print patches using the painters renderer:
hist(randn(1,1000));
colorbar('Location','SouthOutside');
print('test.pdf','-dpdf');
The resulting patches, whether generated by hist
or colorbar
, have triangular splits:
The issue has been discussed on MATLAB Central here and here, where it was suggested that disabling the "smooth line art" option in the pdf-viewer should solve it. This conceals the problem in some readers (e.g. in Adobe Reader but not in Apple Preview), but it is hardly a solution to ask collaborators and readers to use a specific pdf-viewer with non-default settings for graphics to appear correctly. Looking at the resulting file in Inkscape, it is clear that the split is present in the output vector graphics. Here, I moved one half of the colorbar, proving that it is in fact split in half, and not just misinterpreted by the pdf-viewer:
The problem is not present using the OpenGL renderer (print('test.pdf','-opengl')
, but then the output is not vectorized). The problem persists in MATLAB 2015a.
Is there a way to export artifact-free vector graphics in MATLAB 2014b or later?