Placeholder for figure/includegraphics

Question

Is there a command that I can use as a placeholder for \includegraphics? I want to use such a placeholder to add the original graphics later.

Answer 1

I dont't like the demo option of the graphicx package, because one get some ugly black boxes in the document. And if you want to make a test print you waste a lot of ink and maybe your reviser is wondering about. So I created my own demo mode and just include an empty rectangle with the same size of the original picture. If I want to use the original pictures I comment the definition out and all the pictures will be inserted. For this it is necessary to use the picins package.

\documentclass{book}
\usepackage{picins}
\usepackage{graphicx}

\makeatletter
\def\Ginclude@graphics#1{%
    \parpic(\Gin@@ewidth,\Gin@@eheight)[d]{#1}\picskip{0}}%
\makeatother

\begin{document}
\begin{figure}
\centering
  \includegraphics[width=8cm,height=5cm]{myPictureName.png}%
  \caption{My Picture}
\end{figure}
\end{document}

Answer 2

Either load the graphicx package with the demo option or replace \includegraphics by, say, \rule{2cm}{2cm}.

Answer 3

You can do without additional packages: just load graphicx with the demo option and do as explained in this answer; I repeat the code for completeness:

\usepackage[demo]{graphicx}

\makeatletter
  \AtBeginDocument{%
    \def\Ginclude@graphics#1{%
      \begingroup\fboxsep=-\fboxrule
      \fbox{\rule{\@ifundefined{Gin@@ewidth}{150pt}{\Gin@@ewidth}}{0pt}%
        \rule{0pt}{\@ifundefined{Gin@@eheight}{100pt}{\Gin@@eheight}}}\endgroup}}
\makeatother

Just remove the demo option and comment the additional code when you want to include the real graphic files.

This will produce framed rectangles with the specified width and height, but using a predefined dimension when width= and height= are not specified in the options to \includegraphics.

Another strategy is to load graphicx with the draft option, that will read the graphic files for getting their dimensions and print a framed rectangle with the file name in their place

\usepackage[draft]{graphicx}

As always, beware of file names with spaces: enclosing the name between double quotes should avoid problems.

Answer 4

Inspired by Holle's answer (avoid a big black toner hungry box), here is one with pgf. The pgf package has a draft option. With it:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[draft]{pgf}

\begin{document}

\begin{figure}[ht]
\centering
\begin{pgfpicture}
    \pgftext{\pgfimage[width=5cm,height=4cm]{scratch.png}}
\end{pgfpicture}
\end{figure}

\end{document}

where scratch.png is your image. With draft as an option to the pgf package this simply looks like a box with the file name:

Without the draft option, the image is placed as expected.

Answer 5

If you need individual figures to be omitted rather than all of them, you first copy a dummy figure (called foo here) to your figures path, then use as:

\includegraphics[draft]{foo}

It will display something like:

It will also save ink, and you can use \includegraphics syntax as it is, you just need to replace foo and remove draft from command.

Answer 6

todonotes provides the \missingfigure command, precisely designed for this case

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{todonotes}

\begin{document}

\missingfigure[figwidth=6cm]{Testing a long text string}

\end{document}

Answer 7

If you want to "hide" the entire picture, but reserve the space, you could use the following lines:

\usepackage{xcolor,graphicx}
...
\color{white}
\includegraphics[draft , ...]{picture}
\color{black}