Matlab - Smoothing crooked and aliased lines in plots - matlab

Question

I'm sure this has an easy solution, but I can't get a way out of it. When I plot a thick line in Matlab and print it (r550) I get the crooked line seen below. I tried the 'smooth' command to no avail. Here's the code:
plot(x,y1,'b','LineWidth',8);hold on
plot(x,y2,'r','LineWidth',8);hold on
print -djpeg -r550 figure1
here's the blue line values (y1):
y1 = [1.9 1.81 1.73 1.65 1.63 1.6 1.65 1.59 1.54 1.52 1.47 1.52 1.53 1.48 1.44 1.43 1.‌​39 1.38 1.34 1.33 1.33 1.32 1.29 1.26 1.23 1.22 1.24 1.23 1.21 1.22 1.22 1.2 1.25‌​ 1.25 1.22 1.22 1.2 1.18 1.19 1.17 1.15 1.13 1.15 1.13 1.11 1.09 1.08 1.07 1.12 1‌​.1 1.1 1.08 1.08 1.07 1.05 1.04 1.03 1.01 1.01 1.01 1.01 1 1 1 1 1 0.99 1.01 1.01‌​ 1.01 1 0.99 0.98 0.98 0.98 0.97 0.97 0.97 0.97 0.97 0.97 0.96 0.96 0.96 0.96 0.9‌​5 0.95 0.99 0.98 1 0.99 0.98 0.98 0.98 0.98 0.98 0.97 0.97 0.97 0.96 0.95 0.94 0.‌​94 0.93 0.93 0.93 0.92 0.93 0.92 0.91 0.92 0.92 0.91 0.92 0.93 0.92 0.91 0.91 0.9‌​1 0.9 0.89 0.89 0.89 0.88 0.88];
Any help to make it look nice and smooth? Thanks!
---------WITH DMETA--------------
I used a resolution of 600dpi. Next figure doesn't look bad, but in a Word file or Powerpoint doesn't shows as good. Any ideas??

Answer 1

If you work in Windows, the good option is to export to a windows meta file (.emf) instead of jpeg:
print -dmeta figure1
Additionally, it looks much better in MS Office documents (vector format).
You can always convert emf to jpeg if required.

Answer 2

This problem is caused by how matlab renders objects for saving.
One thing you could try is the HG2 update to MATLAB (link). It is a MAJOR improvement to how visually appealing graphics are, however it can cause matlab to crash.
A workaround that you might find good enough is to add a marker plot for each data line. such as
plot(x,y1,'.b','MarkerSize',24);
Placing a marker at each node will fill in the rough edges of the plot. You might have to play around with the marker size a little.