How do I extract the TIFF preview from an EPS file

Question

EPS files can include embedded TIFF (and rarely WMF) previews for easy rendering in environments which do not have PostScript available. (See Wikipedia for more info.)

Given such an EPS, how can I extract the TIFF into a separate file using MATLAB?

Answer 1

% Define the source EPS file and the desired target TIFF to create.
source = 'ode_nonneg1.eps';
target = 'ode_nonneg1.tif';

% Read in the EPS file.
f = fopen(source,'rb');
d = fread(f,'uint8');
fclose(f);

% Check the header to verify it is a TIFF.
if ~isequal(d(1:4),[197;208;211;198])
    error 'This does not appear to be a vaild TIFF file.'
end

% Extract the TIFF data location from the headers.
tiffStart = sum(d(21:24).*256.^(0:3)')+1;
tiffLength = sum(d(25:28).*256.^(0:3)');

% Write the TIFF file.
f = fopen(target,'w');
fwrite(f,d(tiffStart:tiffStart-1+tiffLength),'uint8','b');
fclose(f);