drawing a shape in MATLAB

I want to draw the map of united states countray in MATLAB for having a high quality shape for printing. When I draw this map in word2010 and save as a picture and then open it with MATLAB,the quality is low. Is there any way in MATLAB, for drawing the map?

Answer 1

[Jan]

You can download a high-quality scalable picture from the net, e.g. stars_stripes.pdf . If you really want to do it by your own, use these instructions: http://www.usflag.org/flag.specs.html .

Drawing in Word seems to be a bad idea, but the transfer to Matlab should be fine, if you use an accurate format. I'm sure you "Save as picture"-operation could be improved, if you explain the relevant details.

[mohammad]

Hi Jan, thanks for your answer. I need political map of some countries like US, German, .... in high quality for printing by MATLAB. (I add some information to this maps in MATLAB and then print). I downloaded some maps from the net but when opening these with MATLAB, the quality is not that I want (quality is not high). So I drown these political maps by my own in Word and then saved as a picture but the quality is steel low. Jan, is there any way for drawing these maps in MATLAB?

[Ryan]

Matlab is not reducing the quality of your images, it is loading them at the quality that they are saved. There are two main reasons for this observation that I can think of, one is the file format and the other is your method of determining quality. What format are you loading the image into Matlab with? Are you determining quality based solely off the figure window that pops up? If the image is too large to fit on the screen, Matlab will down-size it to display all the information which could cause it to look "low quality." If you're having issues with the appearance after saving the figure, then it may be the limitation of Matlab's basic figure saving features, check out the file exchange submission export_fig to save better looking figures.

If you have the ability to post screen shots of your image at "high quality" (in word?) and "low quality" (in Matlab), it may be beneficial in finding you a solution.

[mohammad]

Thanks Ryan. I saved the picture in .bmp format (the main format is in Word2010 and .dox format). I want to print the final result in large scale (84.1*118.9 cm). For example you can see and download one of this pictures here: http://www.mediafire.com/view/?z70fg0h8mc31tm1

Answer 2

[Image Analyst]

Why not just get a graphic off the web, or from a stock photography house? I'm not sure if the Mapping Toolbox has any functions to draw the worlds countries. It would be nice if it did. If it did I suppose it could be contentious because some boundary lines are in dispute.

If you want the x,y coordinates, you could import an image that you got off the web, then use find() or threshold it and use bwboundaries() to get the coordinates.