How can I renew \includegraphics to always use \shadowbox?

Question

I want to enclose all \includegraphics into \shadowbox. Therefore I thought to re-define \includegraphics:

\renewcommand{\includegraphics}{\shadowbox\includegraphics}

so that each time \includegraphics is called, actually the graphic is enclosed in a \shadowbox. But the above does not work:

Missing { inserted. \do@VerbBox l.80 \includegraphics {0_home_rkrug_Documents_Publications_2012_handbook_Mana... A left brace was mandatory here, so I've put one in. You might want to delete and/or insert some corrections so that I will find a matching right brace soon. (If you're confused by all this, try typing `I}' now.)

Any suggestions how I can redefine \includegraphics ?

Answer 1

I assume you're using \shadowbox from the fancybox package. You need to save the definition of \includegraphics and to pass it to \shadowbox:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{graphicx,fancybox,letltxmacro}

% save the meaning of \includegraphics
\LetLtxMacro\latexincludegraphics\includegraphics

% pass the image to \shadowbox
\renewcommand{\includegraphics}[2][]{%
  \shadowbox{\latexincludegraphics[#1]{#2}}}

\begin{document}
\includegraphics[width=1cm]{try}
\end{document}

In this particular case \LetLtxMacro is not really needed and the primitive \let would have sufficed, but this approach is safer whenever commands with optional arguments are redefined.

Note that you lose the possibility of using the *-form, use the clip option instead.