MATLAB Function Reference

print, printopt - Print figure or save to file and configure printer defaults

 Contents

GUI Alternative

Use File ⇒ Print on the figure window menu to access the Print dialog and File ⇒ Print Preview to access the Print Preview GUI. For details, see How to Print or Export in the MATLAB Graphics documentation.

Syntax

print
print filename
print -ddriver
print -dformat
print -dformat filename
print -smodelname
print -options
print(...)
[pcmd,dev] = printopt

Description

print and printopt produce hardcopy output. All arguments to the print command are optional. You can use them in any combination or order.

print sends the contents of the current figure, including bitmap representations of any user interface controls, to the printer using the device and system printing command defined by printopt.

print filename directs the output to the PostScript file designated by filename. If filename does not include an extension, print appends an appropriate extension.

print -ddriver prints the figure using the specified printer driver, (such as color PostScript). If you omit -ddriver, print uses the default value stored in printopt.m. The Printer Drivers table lists all supported device types.

print -dformat copies the figure to the system clipboard (Windows only). To be valid, the format for this operation must be either -dmeta (Windows Enhanced Metafile) or -dbitmap (Windows Bitmap).

print -dformat filename exports the figure to the specified file using the specified graphics format, (such as TIFF). The table of Graphics Format Files lists all supported graphics file formats.

print -smodelname prints the current Simulink model modelname.

print -options specifies print options that modify the action of the print command. (For example, the -noui option suppresses printing of user interface controls.) The Options section lists available options.

print(...) is the function form of print. It enables you to pass variables for any input arguments. This form is useful for passing filenames and handles. See Batch Processing for an example.

[pcmd,dev] = printopt returns strings containing the current system-dependent printing command and output device. printopt is an M-file used by print to produce the hardcopy output. You can edit the M-file printopt.m to set your default printer type and destination.

pcmd and dev are platform-dependent strings. pcmd contains the command that print uses to send a file to the printer. dev contains the printer driver or graphics format option for the print command. Their defaults are platform dependent.

Printer Drivers

The table below shows the more widely used printer drivers supported by MATLAB. If you do not specify a driver, MATLAB uses the default setting shown in the previous table. For a list of all supported printer drivers, type

print -d

at the MATLAB prompt. Some things to remember:

• As indicated in the Description section, the -d switch either specifies a printer driver or a graphics file format:

  • Specifying a printer driver without a filename or printer name (the -P option) sends the output formatted by the specified driver to your default printer, which may not be what you want to do.

    Note   On Windows, when you use the -P option to identify a printer to use, if you specify any driver other than -dwin or -dwinc, MATLAB writes the output to a file with an appropriate extension but does not send it to the printer; you can then copy that file to a printer.

  • Specifying a -dmeta or a -dbitmap graphics format without a filename places the graphic on the system clipboard, if possible (Windows only).

  • Specifying any other graphics format without a filename creates a file in the current directory with a name such asfigureN.fmt, where N is 1, 2, 3, ... and fmt indicates the format type, for example eps or png.

• Several of the drivers come from a product called Ghostscript, which is shipped with MATLAB. The last column indicates when Ghostscript is used.

• Some drivers are not available on all platforms. This is noted in the first column of the table.

• If you specify a particular printer with the -P option and do not specify a driver, a default driver for that printer is selected, either by the operating system or by MATLAB, depending on the platform:

  • On Windows, the driver associated with this particular printing device is used

  • On MAC and UNIX, the driver specified in printop.m is used

See Selecting the Printer in the Graphics documentation for more information.

Note   Generally, Level 2 PostScript files are smaller and are rendered more quickly when printing than Level 1 PostScript files. However, not all PostScript printers support Level 2, so determine the capabilities of your printer before using those drivers. Level 2 PostScript is the default for UNIX. You can change this default by editing the printopt.m file. Likewise, if you want color PostScript to be the default instead of black-and-white PostScript, edit the line in the printopt.m file that reads dev = '-dps2'; to be dev = '-dpsc2';.

Graphics Format Files

To save your figure as a graphics-format file, specify a format switch and filename. To set the resolution of the output file for a built-in MATLAB format, use the -r switch. (For example, -r300 sets the output resolution to 300 dots per inch.) The -r switch is also supported for Windows Enhanced Metafiles, JPEG, TIFF and PNG files, but is not supported for Ghostscript formats. For more information, see Printing and Exporting without a Display.

The table below shows the supported output formats for exporting from MATLAB and the switch settings to use. In some cases, a format is available both as a MATLAB output filter and as a Ghostscript output filter. All formats except for EMF are supported on both the PC and UNIX platforms.

The TIFF image format is supported on all platforms by almost all word processors for importing images. The -dtiffn variant writes an uncompressed TIFF. JPEG is a lossy, highly compressed format that is supported on all platforms for image processing and for inclusion into HTML documents on the World Wide Web. To create these formats, MATLAB renders the figure using the Z-buffer rendering method and the resulting bitmap is then saved to the specified file.

Printing and Exporting without a Display

On a UNIX platform (including Macintosh), where you can start MATLAB in nodisplay mode (matlab -nodisplay), you can print using most of the drivers you can use with a display and export to most of the same file formats. The PostScript and Ghostscript devices all function in nodisplay mode on UNIX. The graphic devices -djpeg, -dpng, -dtiff (compressed TIFF bitmaps) and -tiff (EPS with TIFF preview) work as well, but under nodisplay they use Ghostscript to generate output instead of using the drivers built into MATLAB. However, Ghostscript ignores the -r option when generating -djpeg, -dpng, -dtiff and -tiff image files. This means that you cannot vary the resolution of image files when running in nodisplay mode.

Naturally, the Windows-only -dwin and -dwinc output formats cannot be used on UNIX or MAC with or without a display.

The same holds true on Windows with the -noFigureWindows startup option. The -dwin, -dwinc, and -dsetup options operate as usual under -noFigureWindows. However, the printpreview GUI does not function in this mode.

The formats which you cannot generate in nodisplay mode on UNIX and MAC are

• bitmap (-dbitmap) — Windows bitmap file (except for Simulink models)

• bmp (-dbmp...) — Monochrome and color bitmaps

• hdf (-dhdf) — Hierarchical Data Format

• svg (-dsvg) — Scalable Vector Graphics file (except for Simulink models)

• tiffn (-dtiffn) — TIFF image file, no compression

Printing Options

This table summarizes options that you can specify for print. The second column also shows which tutorial sections contain more detailed information. The sections listed are located under Printing and Exporting Figures with MATLAB.

Paper Sizes

MATLAB supports a number of standard paper sizes. You can select from the following list by setting the PaperType property of the figure or selecting a supported paper size from the Print dialog box.

Printing Tips

This section includes information about specific printing issues.

Figures with Resize Functions

The print command produces a warning when you print a figure having a callback routine defined for the figure ResizeFcn. To avoid the warning, set the figure PaperPositionMode property to auto or select Match Figure Screen Size in the File⇒Page Setup dialog box.

Troubleshooting MS Windows Printing

If you encounter problems such as segmentation violations, general protection faults, or application errors, or the output does not appear as you expect when using MS-Windows printer drivers, try the following:

• If your printer is PostScript compatible, print with one of the MATLAB built-in PostScript drivers. There are various PostScript device options that you can use with the print command: they all start with -dps.

• The behavior you are experiencing might occur only with certain versions of the print driver. Contact the print driver vendor for information on how to obtain and install a different driver.

• Try printing with one of the MATLAB built-in Ghostscript devices. These devices use Ghostscript to convert PostScript files into other formats, such as HP LaserJet, PCX, Canon BubbleJet, and so on.

• Copy the figure as a Windows Enhanced Metafile using the Edit-⇒Copy Figure menu item on the figure window menu or the print -dmeta option at the command line. You can then import the file into another application for printing.

  You can set copy options in the figure's File⇒Preferences⇒Copying Options dialog box. The Windows Enhanced Metafile clipboard format produces a better quality image than Windows Bitmap.

Printing MATLAB GUIs

You can generally obtain better results when printing a figure window that contains MATLAB uicontrols by setting these key properties:

• Set the figure PaperPositionMode property to auto. This ensures that the printed version is the same size as the onscreen version. With PaperPositionMode set to auto MATLAB does not resize the figure to fit the current value of the PaperPosition. This is particularly important if you have specified a figure ResizeFcn, because if MATLAB resizes the figure during the print operation, ResizeFcn is automatically called.

  To set PaperPositionMode on the current figure, use the command

  set(gcf,'PaperPositionMode','auto')
  

• Set the figure InvertHardcopy property to off. By default, MATLAB changes the figure background color of printed output to white, but does not change the color of uicontrols. If you have set the background color, for example, to match the gray of the GUI devices, you must set InvertHardcopy to off to preserve the color scheme.

  To set InvertHardcopy on the current figure, use the command

  set(gcf,'InvertHardcopy','off')
  

• Use a color device if you want lines and text that are in color on the screen to be written to the output file as colored objects. Black and white devices convert colored lines and text to black or white to provide the best contrast with the background and to avoid dithering.

• Use the print command's -loose option to prevent MATLAB from using a bounding box that is tightly wrapped around objects contained in the figure. This is important if you have intentionally used space between uicontrols or axes and the edge of the figure and you want to maintain this appearance in the printed output.

If you run code that adds uicontrols to a figure when the figure is invisible, the controls will not print until the figure is made visible.

Notes on Printing Interpolated Shading with PostScript Drivers

MATLAB can print surface objects (such as graphs created with surf or mesh) using interpolated colors. However, only patch objects that are composed of triangular faces can be printed using interpolated shading.

Printed output is always interpolated in RGB space, not in the colormap colors. This means that if you are using indexed color and interpolated face coloring, the printed output can look different from what is displayed on screen.

PostScript files generated for interpolated shading contain the color information of the graphics object's vertices and require the printer to perform the interpolation calculations. This can take an excessive amount of time and in some cases, printers might time out before finishing the print job. One solution to this problem is to interpolate the data and generate a greater number of faces, which can then be flat shaded.

To ensure that the printed output matches what you see on the screen, print using the -zbuffer option. To obtain higher resolution (for example, to make text look better), use the -r option to increase the resolution. There is, however, a tradeoff between the resolution and the size of the created PostScript file, which can be quite large at higher resolutions. The default resolution of 150 dpi generally produces good results. You can reduce the size of the output file by making the figure smaller before printing it and setting the figure PaperPositionMode to auto, or by just setting the PaperPosition property to a smaller size.

Examples

Specifying the Figure to Print

You can print a noncurrent figure by specifying the figure's handle. If a figure has the title "Figure 2", its handle is 2. The syntax is

print -fhandle 

This example prints the figure whose handle is 2, regardless of which figure is the current figure.

print -f2

Note   You must use the -f option if the figure's handle is hidden (i.e., its HandleVisibility property is set to off).

This example saves the figure with the handle -f2 to a PostScript file named Figure2, which can be printed later.

print -f2 -dps 'Figure2.ps'

If the figure uses noninteger handles, use the figure command to get its value, and then pass it in as the first argument.

h = figure('IntegerHandle','off')
print h -depson

You can also pass a figure handle as a variable to the function form of print. For example,

h = figure; plot(1:4,5:8)
print(h)

This example uses the function form of print to enable a filename to be passed in as a variable.

filename = 'mydata';
print('-f3', '-dpsc', filename);

(Because a filename is specified, the figure will be printed to a file.)

Specifying the Model to Print

To print a noncurrent Simulink model, use the -s option with the title of the window. For example, this command prints the Simulink window titled f14.

print -sf14

If the window title includes any spaces, you must call the function form rather than the command form of print. For example, this command saves Simulink window title Thruster Control.

print('-sThruster Control')

To print the current system, use

print -s

For information about issues specific to printing Simulink windows, see the Simulink documentation.

Printing Figures at Screen Size

This example prints a surface plot with interpolated shading. Setting the current figure's (gcf) PaperPositionMode to auto enables you to resize the figure window and print it at the size you see on the screen. See Options and the previous section for information on the -zbuffer and -r200 options.

surf(peaks)
shading interp
set(gcf,'PaperPositionMode','auto')
print -dpsc2 -zbuffer -r200

For additional details, see Printing Images in the MATLAB Graphics documentation.

Batch Processing

You can use the function form of print to pass variables containing file names. For example, this for loop uses filenames stored in a cell array to create a series of graphs and prints each one with a different file name.

fnames = {'file1', 'file2', 'file3'};
for k=1:length(fnames)
    surf(peaks)
    print('-dtiff','-r200',fnames{k})
end

Tiff Preview

The command

print -depsc -tiff -r300 picture1

saves the current figure at 300 dpi, in a color Encapsulated PostScript file named picture1.eps. The -tiff option creates a 72 dpi TIFF preview, which many word processor applications can display on screen after you import the EPS file. This enables you to view the picture on screen within your word processor and print the document to a PostScript printer using a resolution of 300 dpi.

See Also

orient, figure

primes

printdlg