Disabling included pictures in Beamer

Question

I am preparing a huge document with tons of pictures and Tikz drawings (based on Beamer package). Is there a command for NOT including all the pictures inserted by \includegraphics? This might speed up the typesetting.

Answer 1

Usually the solution \usepackage[draft]{graphicx} won't work, because beamer loads the graphicx package by itself. You'll get the message

Option clash for package graphicx

You have to pass the draft option to the package before it will be loaded. Therefore write

\PassOptionsToPackage{draft}{graphicx}

before \documentclass{...}. This should solve your problem.

Answer 2

Not related to \includegraphics but something that will speed up your typesetting in development mode: \includeonlyframes. If you label the frames you're "working" on, you can typeset just those without disturbing the auxiliary files, very similar to \includeonly.

Example:

\documentclass{beamer}
\includeonlyframes{foo}
\begin{document}
\begin{frame}[label=foo]
    First frame
\end{frame}
\begin{frame}[label=bar]
    Second frame, which will not be seen.
\end{frame}
\end{document}

The beamer manual documents this feature as well.