Can transparency be used with PostScript/EPS?

Question

I am trying to save an R plot as an EPS file but I have a problem with the following component of the plot - the gray transparent polygon (transparent black = gray effect):

polygon(x.polygon, y.polygon.6, col="#00000022", border=NA)

This line of code works fine when saving the plot as PDF but not as EPS. Looks like EPS does not support transparency? What other choice would I have?

Here is the code for the full plot:

postscript(file="Figure.eps", width=5.5, height=5.5, onefile=F, horizontal=F)

ts(t(data.frame(initial_timepoint, second_timepoint, third_timepoint, final_timepoint)))->obj
obj[,-c(3,7)]->obj1
plot(obj1, plot.type="single", lwd=0.6, xaxs="i",yaxs="i",xlab="",ylab="LV ejection fraction (%)",xaxt='n',yaxt='n',ylim=c(0,70),col="black")
axis(1, at=c(1,2,3,4), labels=c("1","2","3","4"),cex.axis=1)
axis(2, at=seq(0,70,10), labels=c("0%","10%","20%","30%","40%","50%","60%","70%"),cex.axis=1, las=1)
abline(v=c(2,3),lwd=0.6,lty=2)

stderr <- function(x) sqrt(var(x,na.rm=TRUE)/length(na.omit(x)))
avg<-c(mean(initial_timepoint,na.rm=T), mean(second_timepoint,na.rm=T), mean(third_timepoint,na.rm=T), mean(final_timepoint,na.rm=T))
err<-c(stderr(initial_timepoint), stderr(second_timepoint), stderr(third_timepoint), stderr(final_timepoint))

my.count <- c(1,2,3,4)
my.count.rev <- c(4,3,2,1)
y.polygon.6 <- c((avg+err*1.96)[my.count],(avg-err*1.96)[my.count.rev])
x.polygon <- c(my.count, my.count.rev)
polygon(x.polygon, y.polygon.6, col="#00000022", border=NA)
lines(avg,col="black",lwd=0.8,lty=3)
lines((avg+err*1.96),lwd=0.8,lty=3)
lines((avg-err*1.96),lwd=0.8,lty=3)

dev.off()

Answer 1

Although the EPS format does not natively support semi-transparency, it is still possible to use cairo_ps(), that one automatically rasterizes semi-transparent areas, and the resolution at which it does this can be controlled with the argument fallback_resolution :

cairo_ps(file = "test.eps", onefile = FALSE, fallback_resolution = 600)
qplot(Sepal.Length, Petal.Length, data = iris, color = Species, size = Petal.Width, alpha = I(0.7))
dev.off()

All the non-semi-transparent areas then nicely stay as vector graphics.

Or even shorter you can also use :

ggsave("filename.eps", device=cairo_ps, fallback_resolution = 600)

Or use the functions to export to eps using the new export package, which just came out on CRAN :

install.packages("export")
library(export)
graph2eps("filename.eps", fallback_resolution = 600)

That package also supports a number of other export formats, including Powerpoint (graph2ppt), see ?graph2vector, which also retains semi-transparency...