st: large eps files created from stata graphs

[Jennifer Baxter <Jennifer.Baxter@aifs.gov.au>]

I am creating a set of figures for inclusion in a report. These figures are column graphs, with confidence intervals and labels. To create these graphs I have to overlay three graphs - one with the columns, one with the confidence intervals, and one with the labels. 

e.g. 

twoway (bar nohelp_m gregionue if high6==0 ,  barw(0.8)   ) ///
(bar nohelp_m gregionue if high6==1  ,  barw(0.8) ) ///
(rcap nohelp_ub  nohelp_lb  gregionue ) ///
(scatter mlabelx gregionue , mlabel(nohelp_m) mlabposition(12) m(none) yaxis(1)) , ///
 xlabel(1.5 "Major cities" 4.5 "Inner regional" 7.5  "Outer regional" , notick   )  ///
legend(order(1  "Advantaged" 2 "Disadvantaged"  ))  ///
 xtitle(" " )  ylabel(0(5)30) /// 
ytitle("Percentage", size(small)) ///
ylabel(,angle(horizontal)) xsize(8) legend(size(small))

graph export "unmetsupp.eps",   replace

The Stata graph resulting from the above is  <300KB

However, when I export figures such as this as EPS for inclusion in the report, the resulting files are very large - the simplest ones are around 5MB. It seems that adding confidence intervals doubles the original size, then adding labels doubles this again.  I have been asked to provide EPS files otherwise I would export to a different format. 

Is there anything I can do to reduce the size of these files using Stata ? I cannot see any options that help. I have tried first saving the Stata graph using the "asis" option, but that does not seem to help.

Thanks,
Jenny


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