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I like to be able to whip up quick plots in Mathematica and copy-paste them into emails by just clicking the plot and pressing cmd/ctr-C. However, the resolution is a bit fuzzy for my tastes. If I increase the size of the plot (using the ImageSize option) or increase the magnification of the Mathematica window, then the image pasted into gmail gets larger, but it still looks fuzzy; that is, the absolute resolution increases but the on-screen DPI is still to low. Is it possible to increase the DPI for this task?

I know of course that when exporting anything for professional reasons, one would use the "save selection as..." command or something similar. But this is too slow and clunky for dropping plots in a quick email.

EDIT: It seems that the export resolution is being shifted downward by Gmail, not Mathematica. This problem does not appear when pasting into the OS X Mail app.

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I run Mathematica on OS X. On that system, for copy and paste, the window magnification level determines the size (and therefore the resolution) of graphics that are pasted. So, at least on OS X, to increase the resolution of your plots, just increase the magnification level before you copy. Possibly the behavior of copy and paste on other system will be similar, but I can only talk about OS X from personal experience.

Update

I use the OS X Mail app for my email. I don't see any fuzziness when I paste Mathematica graphics into that app. Are you sure what you are seeing is not a gmail issue? Have you tried emailing a plot to yourself? Did it look fuzzy in received email when you down-load it to your computer? Looking at email on gmail in a browser might not be showing the full resolution of the actual graphic.

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  • $\begingroup$ Thanks. (I'm on OS X too.) For me, increasing magnification has the same end effect as just printing the plot bigger. (I.e., using the ImageSize option for Plot.) That generates a larger image (and so higher absolute resolution) when I copy and paste it into gmail, but it still looks fuzzy. So I think what I really want to ask is how to increase the DPI? I will edit the question. Thanks for helping me refine. $\endgroup$ Commented Dec 4, 2016 at 15:16
  • $\begingroup$ Actually, I take that back, these aren't quite equivalent. ImageSize is a bit different because it will also affect the relative size of the tick marks and labels. Magnification will only change the absolute size and resolution. Additionally, since gmail will automatically re-size images to the width of the email (which ends up increasing the DPI), magnification essentially solves my problem. $\endgroup$ Commented Dec 4, 2016 at 15:28
  • $\begingroup$ In response to your edit: I sent multiple versions (different magnification settings) to myself within gmail. They all were re-sized to be "full width", but you could clearly see differences in the resolution. And when I downloaded them as raw images and viewed them in Preview, they were different resolutions. This was true for Gmail in both Chrome and Firefox. I then repeated this in OS X Mail. This time, the images were also of different resolutions, but they were much larger across the board, and the DPI looked good. I conclude that this is a problem on Gmail's end, not Mathematica. $\endgroup$ Commented Dec 6, 2016 at 1:39

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