Map Export/Unsupported Formats

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The University map's Export/Print makes PDF files (in a variety of ways) and PNG images.

It doesn't produce EPS or JPEG files. Here's why:

JPEG

JPEG isn't well suited for images with large areas of flat colour which you find in maps. Because of the compression method, these tend to come out blotchy.

PNG can be used anywhere a JPEG image could be used, including in Microsoft Word documents and on web sites, and if you send it by email, all email clients that can display images will show PNG images.

EPS

EPS is a vector format most often used in professional printing to include graphics in a publication being prepared in a page layout program such as Adobe InDesign, Quark XPress, Microsoft Publisher or Serif PagePlus.

While PDF is often used for complete pages, it can just as easily store exactly the same information as a EPS file. As everything that uses EPS files can also use PDF in the same context, there is no advantage to offering both.

Furthermore, GhostScript, the program used to generate these vector files, is not able to include fonts in its EPS and converts them all the letters to shapes, which are not at quite as high a quality and produces larger files.

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