I have been encountering the same problem while using Adobe Acrobat
Distiller to convert EPS graphics from Stata into PDF. The problem is
that after conversion, I view the resultant PDF and the graph is always
"embedded" in a 8.5in by 11in "canvas" even though the graph is several
sizes smaller than letterpaper size. In other words a lot of
white-space is created that should not be part of the graph.
I have been attempting EPS -> PDF conversion because for a variety of
reasons I need to use the pdfLaTeX driver (I typeset in LaTeX), which
accepts inclusion of single-page PDF graphics but not EPS. And it's not
just Distiller which creates this problem, but Ghostscript (plus
GSview) as well.
The latter assertion is false. pdflatex accepts eps files when the
appropriate package ( epsfig) is invoked. See my recent posting with a
fragment of LaTeX code for an example. I use pdflatex (driven by
TeXShop on OS X) routinely with eps files as the only form of graphical
input.
