High quality pdf to eps

Question

I have always used pgfplot of latex to produce figures(.pdf format). Now, the journal in which I want to publish wants my figures to be in eps format.

I tried converting pdf to eps using pdftops -eps fig.pdf fig.eps. But the resulting eps file is of poor quality.

Original figure (in .pdf format)

Converted figure (in .eps format)

What is the right procedure to create eps file that is the same quality as my input pdf file?

EDIT

As per PooyaRaki recommendations: Inkscape option output(.eps)

Ghostscript option(.eps format)

Acrobat reader option output (.ps format)

Acrobat reader seems to work the best among the three.

Answer 1

I recommend the following tools:

• Inkscape (Vector graphic editor, free & multi-platform)

  Can be either used using the GUI (open PDF, save as EPS) or using the command line (tested under Linux only):

  inkscape input.pdf --export-eps=output.eps
  

• Acrobat Reader (Linux Version) + ps2eps (TeXLive)

  acroread -toPostScript input.pdf
  ps2eps input.ps
  

• Ghostscript (multi-platform) Note: -dNOCACHE is needed to prevent GhostScript from rastering the fonts.

  gs -q -dNOCACHE -dNOPAUSE -dBATCH -dSAFER -sDEVICE=eps2write -sOutputFile=output.eps input.pdf
  

There are also the following tools. I didn't tested all of them and some raster the fonts :-( !

• ImageMagick convert (which might use Ghostscript itself. Calling it manually if more flexible and might avoid issues. convert might actually raster the PDF!)

  convert input.pdf output.eps
  

• pdf2ps (uses Ghostscript) + ps2eps (comes with TeXLive)

• pdftops (part of poppler), use the -eps switch for EPS output.

Note that EPS format does not handle transparency !