Images in LaTeX – what's the solution?

Question

I've faced so many problems using images in LaTeX. See for example, another question at http://stackoverflow.com/questions/382590/latex-using-eps-images-builds-slowly

What tools do you use to make figures for inclusion into LaTeX? Is there a simple solution to this? Some scenarios described below:

• I want to add a screenshot into LaTeX;
• I want to include a figure from visio into LaTeX;
• I plot a graph, export into png, and the image does not seem to have a bounding box.

How to handle these scenarios?

Answer 1

For the scenarios you're talking about you could try pdflatex, it works with PNG images included directly in LaTeX files:

\includegraphics[width=4in,height=4in,viewport=0 0 300 300]{figure.png}

latex + dvipdf might also accept PNGs, I'm not sure. The disadvantage of this is that you can't use any Postscript-specific packages, like pstricks or draftcopy. I usually prepare my figures as EPS, which prints better because it's a vector graphics format, but I just use the DVI file for previews of the document. That way, even if I have large EPS figures in the document, I won't have to wait a long time for the preview.

Answer 2

Related answer here

Short story

• store your raster pictures as .png (or .jpg, but lossless is better where you can).

• don't export your plotted graph as a .png. It's a vector object, and any decent plotting package will output it as a .pdf or .eps.

• depending on your final output, you might want to save vector figures as .pdf's and then use pdflatex to generate a pdf file. There are good reasons to avoid this sometimes, though.

• if you do need to go the .dvi -> ps/whatever route, you'll have to generate .eps files even for your raster images. Imagemagick or a similar tool is your friend here.

• other general tips: use graphicx package, don't include suffixes on the filename when you include the figure.

Answer 3

In case of plotting, I use Gnuplot - it supports saving files in eps format and it's better than png, because it is saved as a vector not a bitmap (you can zoom it without any reasonable limits).

pdflatex supports png, jpg, tiff and pdf graphics, so you can add it without converting. If you want to include eps file to pdflatex, use the eps2pdf tool which is installed with Latex.

If you really want to convert everything to eps, try Gimp.

Answer 4

My papers are very heavy on screenshots and diagrams.

I have had great luck exporting or saving as PDF (rather than EPS) and then embedding it. PDFs (if exported as images, not as an actual print) have fairly decent sizing info, and embed in an instant.

On a Mac, you get that functionality from OmniGraffle (a Visio analogue), but perhaps Visio does it these as well.

Answer 5

On the side of creating figures one can use the Inskscape program, it uses vector graphics and has good pdf support.

In my experience I found it to be very nice to pdflatex. I like TikZ but it has quite the learning cuve,and for creating figures a more WYSISWYG approach makes sense to me.

Answer 6

I use \includegraphics with pdflatex and recommend this combination highly. I have a few hints that might make sense. (Note that these come from my background in technical writing, which can be figure-laden.)

1. Always specify graphic width (or height) in the [] block. This will allow you to use graphics of different rendered sizes.

2. Do not supply the file extension suffix. That way, if you decide that you can make the file smaller or better as a .png or a .jpg or whatever, then your latex code will not have to change. (I commonly create diagrams in a variety of formats, to get small size. See also the last point below, about experimentation.)

3. If you are creating diagrams yourself, make them wider than they are tall, perhaps using a 2/3 ratio. This looks good, and it will let latex fit figures into your document more easily. (If your figures have to be at a 1:1 ratio, use white space on the sides, to avoid using more than a relatively small fraction of page height.)

4. Again, if you are creating diagrams yourself, take a bit of time to experiment with font size and image geometry. The normal rule is that text on a diagram should not use a font that is smaller than in the caption or main text. Once you find a good formula, you can stick to it for all your diagrams. This will make the document look good, and it will save you a lot of time spent twiddling geometries on a per-figure basis.

Answer 7

I have been using the tikz and the standalone package. The figure are placed in separate files and \input into the main file. For example, here is the contents of file Ellpise.tex:

\documentclass{standalone}
\usepackage{tikz}

\begin{document}
\begin{tikzpicture}

\coordinate (EllipseOrigin) at (0,0);
\newcommand*{\XRadius}{4.0}
\newcommand*{\YRadius}{3.0}

\draw [blue, thin, ->] (-5,0) -- (5,0) node [right] {$x$};
\draw [blue, thin, ->] (0,-4) -- (0,4) node [above] {$y$};

\draw [red, ultra thick]% Graph Ellipse
    (EllipseOrigin) ellipse [x radius=\XRadius,y radius=\YRadius];

\end{tikzpicture}
\end{document}

Then in the main file I have:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{standalone}
\usepackage{tikz}

\begin{document}
Here is the graph of an ellipse:

\input{Ellipse}
\end{document}

I keep the figures in a separate directory and can compile them separately to ensure that I get them the way I want them. There are various other options you could do to such as to place these in a Figure environment if desired.