print_pdf

Save figures to high quality pdfs with cropped borders and embedded fonts.

Description

PLEASE NOTE - This function has now been superseded by EXPORT_FIG, which encompasses all its functionality plus some further functionality. This function will therefore no longer receive any support. EXPORT_FIG can be downloaded from:
http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/23629

PRINT_PDF saves a figure to a pdf file, with:
   - Figure borders cropped
   - Fonts embedded (as subsets)
   - Accurate vector graphics, compressed losslessly
   - High quality bitmap graphics, compressed lossily
   - Line dash lengths vary with line width (as on screen)
   - Grid lines given their own dot style, instead of dashed
   - No options to be set

The screenshot demonstrates the benefit of PRINT_PDF over MATLAB's pdf saving functions. It shows a figure (top right) saved to pdf using MATLAB's gui "File->Save as..." option (bottom right) and PRINT_PDF (left). MATLAB's default options provide no cropping, inaccurate vector graphics (including nasty dashed lines which don't resemble those in the original figure) and highly compressed, blocky bitmap graphics. PRINT_PDF overcomes these issues (albeit generating a larger file), and additionally embeds all fonts - perfect for using the pdf in scientific papers which require this.

PRINT_PDF requires only a target filename and an optional figure handle - there are no other options to be set. The output pdf is exactly the size and layout of the figure on the screen.

PRINT_PDF uses ghostscript, so this must be installed on your system and the executable must be on your system's path. Get ghostscript from:
http://www.ghostscript.com

Acknowledgements

The author wishes to acknowledge the following in the creation of this submission:
savefig
This submission has inspired the following:
export_fig

• MATLAB release: MATLAB 7.5 (R2007b)
• Other requirements: Ghostscript

[Dave Ciochetto]

Nice file. Almost perfect for what I was seeking. I have 2 problems.

The minor one - the path is not set properly for Linux, Mac and Unix machines. I moved the name = line into the if statement that determines if the machine is a pc and replace the \ (PC) with the / (UNIX). i.e.

% Print to eps file
tmp_nam = [tempname '.eps'];
print('-depsc2', '-noui', '-painters', ['-f' num2str(fig)], '-r600', tmp_nam);
% Convert to pdf
% This assumes that the ghostscript binary is on your path - you can also
% give the complete path
if ispc
    cmd = 'gswin32c.exe';
    name = [cd '\' name];
else
    cmd = 'gs';
    name = [cd '/' name];
end

The second problem that I have is that it squashes my superscripts on the x-axis up into the axis numbers. I have not been able to trouble shoot that yet. It seems to be related to the ghostscript call which is yet unfamiliar to me. I am seeking a hack but would be interested to know if anyone else had this problem.

[Dave Ciochetto]

In the previous submission I did not intend to give it a star rating. That was an error and two stars does not reflect my rating of this script.

[Dave Ciochetto]

This is an excellent script solving a problem that I have been struggling with. Inserting PDF figures into a LaTeX document for processing with PDFaTeX. This script should give a much greater amount of control over the consistency rather than using

print -dpdf filename

which adds borders and resizes the figure from what you see on the screen.

Get your figure all set up the way you want it to look on the screen and then you will get a cropped PDF that will look just like the figure on the screen. If you don't size the figure in Matlab for the end size (printed version from your word processor) then realize that things will scale when you adjust the size in the word processor so be sure to make your text large enough to be seen in print form.

The script is excellent for me as this is the way I work. It will make your work much more repeatable with results that you desire and save time when it comes to figures.

[Jody Klymak]

Nice job with this. I have something similar using epstopdf As a trick to force the cropping to be at the figure size (retaining white space) I added

axes('position',[0 0 1 1])

By the way, the Mathworks looked into the lack of PDF cropping as a bug for me at one point. We didn't know about the -DEpsCrop option, so it didn't get fixed.

[zhang jie]

good work, thanks for sharing.

[Abdulwahab Abokhodair]

Please tel me how to add ghostscript to my system path. When I add the full path in the print_pdf file as:
cmd = 'C:\Program Files\gs\gs8.63\bin\gswin32c.exe';
I get an error because of the space in <Program Files>
I also tried to add the path via the Environment Variables
but was not successful!
Thanks

[Oliver Woodford]

You should edit the Path in the User Environment Variables. The way to do this varies between versions of windows. I suggest you search for the relevant instructions in google using:
windows XXXX set system path
where XXXX is your version of Windows, e.g. Vista, XP, 2000.
Add
;C:\Program Files\gs\gs8.63\bin\gswin32c.exe
(or the appropriate path to your Ghostscript installation) to end of the path, remembering the semicolon at the start to separate paths.

[Oliver Woodford]

Alternatively you can set the path in print_pdf.m by changing the line
cmd = [cmd 'win32c.exe'];
to
cmd = '"C:\Program Files\gs\gs8.63\bin\gswin32c.exe"';
or the correct path for you. Note there are double quotes inside single quotes here.

[Oliver Woodford]

The latest version now finds Ghostscript automatically on Windows, if it was installed in the default location.

[Cris Luengo]

Works great for me! The only complaint is that it changes the units on the figure window, which is a tad annoying when you want to update and print the figure repeatedly. I changed the papersize/position setting thus:

set(fig, 'PaperPositionMode', 'auto') % sets paperposition equal to position (independent of units used)
sz = get(fig, 'PaperPosition');
sz(1:2) = 0;
set(fig, 'PaperSize', sz(3:4), 'PaperPosition', sz);

(the alternative is to set the figure units to inches and set them back to the initial value afterward, but this seemed simpler).

Thanks!

[Oliver Woodford]

I wondered if that would cause problems. Duly fixed. Thanks, Cris.

[Oliver Woodford]

Apologies for the recent flurry of updates to this file. I was too quick to upload functionality that turned out to be buggy and incomplete. The latest version is now stable, and also enables dash lengths to change with line width - super!

[Johannes]

Thanks a lot, This was exactly what I wanted!

I only had to edit line 58, to correct the path where my ghostcript binary is located.

The find script did not work, and I think it is not necessarry.
More likely the user should be able to define the path once he starts working with the script.

Cheers and thank you so much!

Johannes

[Jian]

it's very useful .......thanks a lot

[Koray S. Erer]

Hi,
Nice work but originally italic Greek letters (TeX) turn out to be non-italic. Any ideas?

[David Gingras]

Very useful code. Perfect for direct image integration in pdfLaTeX.

[Mohd Kharbat]

 

[Morvan]

Nice job... I did my own equivalent file, but clearly not as much efficient as yours.
There is just one thing that could eventually be improved when the figure include patch objects, Matlab does not know how to export vectorial data in this case. This results in a "Warning: RGB color data not yet supported in Painter's mode". And changing Painter for another renderer implies lost of vectorial format... I know this is a Matlab limitation, but if anyone has an idea about it, it would be nice!

[James]

Nice work, produces PDFs of my figures exactly how I want them.

However, when I include them in Latex using \includegraphics I get "Error: Cannot determine size of graphic in xxx.pdf (no BoundingBox)" - anyone any ideas how to fix this?

[Oliver Woodford]

PDFs can be used in Latex to produce PDF files using pdflatex, but not PS files using latex & dvips. See:
http://amath.colorado.edu/documentation/LaTeX/reference/figures.html
James: perhaps you are trying to do the latter. If so you need to save your figures as EPS files - try using print_eps.

[Ben]

I get a message after trying to execute the system() command on line 64 of

"gs -q -dNOPAUSE ..<snip> : Segmentation Fault" with a status of 139.

I think this might be a bug in Matlab or a setup issue because if I copy and paste the actual system command into a terminal window (CSH) it executes without any issues and the .PDF results are as expected.

Note: I am using 64-bit Linux RedHat 4

So, unfortunately this function did not work on my system but I gave it 5 stars anyway because the results when pasting to CSH window are very good. I will try the newsgroup for help on why a command works in a terminal window but not through a Matlab system() command.

[R]

Great job! However, I don't get it to work on 3D-plots. On 2D-plots it works like a charm. I get the following error message:

>> t = 0:pi/50:10*pi;
        plot3(sin(t),cos(t),t);
>> print_pdf('test')
??? Error using ==> minus
Matrix dimensions must agree.

Error in ==> print_pdf>fix_lines at 162
ind2 = repmat(ind2', [1 numel(ind)]) - repmat(ind, [numel(ind2) 1]);

Error in ==> print_pdf at 49
fix_lines(tmp_nam);

Is it possible to fix this?

[Petter]

The following code fails (MATLAB 7.5):

figure(1);
clf;
F = rgb2gray(imread('peppers.png'));
imagesc(F);
hold on;
contour(F,[128 128],'r-');
axis off;

print_pdf('test.pdf');

??? Error using ==> minus
Matrix dimensions must agree.

Error in ==> print_pdf>fix_lines at 162
ind2 = repmat(ind2', [1 numel(ind)]) - repmat(ind, [numel(ind2) 1]);

Error in ==> print_pdf at 50
fix_lines(tmp_nam);

Error in ==> print_pdf_fail at 9
print_pdf('test.pdf');

[Oliver Woodford]

The bug reported in the last two comments has been fixed.

[Petter]

Thanks for the update!

[Petter]

 

[Balaji Ganeshan]

On the whole this is an excellent post.

But I am having a problem using this file for guide generated figures. I have a push button within my gui to generate a pdf - however I receive an error as follows:

??? Error using ==> print at 310
What follows -f is not a Figure handle.

Error in ==> print_pdf at 48
print('-depsc2', '-noui', '-painters', ['-f' num2str(fig)], '-r864', tmp_nam);

Any help will be much appreciated.

[Dazhi Jiang]

Nice work!
However, I just found that all the pdf files generated by print_pdf have a white background, although I've already set the MATLAB figure background and axis background as 'none' with the commands
>> set(gca, 'Color', 'none');
>> set(gcf, 'Color', 'none');

I wondered whether it can produce a pdf file with transparent background?

By the way, I tried to change the original code to fix the problem. I added two options at the part where the gs command is constructed, that is, -dCompatibilityLevel=1.4 -dHaveTransparency=true. So I have the following code line:

options = [' -q -dNOPAUSE -dBATCH -dEPSCrop -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -dPDFSETTINGS=/prepress -dCompatibilityLevel=1.4 -dHaveTransparency=true -sOutputFile="' name '" -f "' tmp_nam '"'];

But it doesn't work! Am I on the right way? Any help is appreciated.

Thanks.

[Oliver Woodford]

You can generate a pdf with a transparent (or other colored) background using the following command prior to calling print_pdf:
>> set(gcf, 'color', 'none', 'inverthardcopy', 'off');

[Dazhi Jiang]

 

[Dazhi Jiang]

I found the solution to print a pdf file with transparent background. Add the following command before you use 'print_pdf',

set(gcf, 'InvertHardCopy', 'off');

[Dazhi Jiang]

Oliver,

Thanks for your answer. I didn't see it when I posted the last comment. Sorry for the over-posting.

[Karim N'Diaye]

 

[Xu Wings]

the programme was not properly working!

[Petter]

Xu Wings: Very helpful! Maybe you should try harder to make it work, since everyone else seem to have made it work.

[Wolfgang Schwanghart]

Excellent. Thanks!

[Wolfgang Schwanghart]

I got an error message saying:

********************

??? Error using ==> fread
Out of memory. Type HELP MEMORY for your options.

Error in ==> print_pdf>fix_lines at 116
fstrm = char(fread(fh)');

Error in ==> print_pdf at 50
fix_lines(tmp_nam);

Error in ==> script_chexample at 24
print_pdf fig5.pdf

*******

The plot is a surface plot created by surf, shading interp and camlight. Any help will be appreciated.

[David Meller]

Not compatible with R13 (6.5.0). Gives the following error in the file 'print_pdf.m' on line 128:

??? Error using ==> regexp
Invalid option for regexp: start.

Any ideas?

[Oliver Woodford]

David Meller: remove the last two input arguments ('start', 'end') from regexp on line 128. Please email me (use the contact author link on my author page) if you get any more errors.

[Matthijs]

 

[Stefan]

Hi,

not each font is exported correctly on my system.

Ex:
plot((0:10),sin(0:10));
set(gca,'FontName','Arial Black');
export_fig('test', '-pdf');

The font is not 'Arial Black' in this example, although beeing correctly displayed in Matlab.

I'm using winXP, Matlab 7.8.0 (R2009a), Ghostscript 8.70, Adobe Reader 9.2.0. I tried some other fonts, only 'Arial' seems to work properly.

Is this behavior reproducible on your systems or is a solution available?

Thanks for your help!
Stefan

[Oliver Woodford]

Stefan: Two things might help. Firstly, you need to make Ghostscript knows about the fonts you want to include. You can tell it where to look by using the -sFONTPATH="C:\blah\blah" option (obviously using the right path). Secondly, you need to make sure the fonts are in a format that Ghostscript understands. For example, I don't think it understands the OpenType format.

[Stefan]

Hi Oliver,

thanks for your reply.
I only use ttf fonts at the moment.

I tried your first suggestion, but nothing changed. I now use the options

options = [options '-q -dNOPAUSE -dBATCH -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -dPDFSETTINGS=/prepress -sOutputFile="' dest '" -sFONTPATH="C:/Windows/Fonts"'];

Obviously gs doesn't know the fonts except for the standard ones.

I also tried to set the path:

c:\> SET GS_LIB=c:\windows\fonts

And I tried to add fonts to gs/fonts/fontmap (using FontMap v1.7), e.g. the line

/Coronet (C:/WINDOWS/FONTS/coronet.ttf) ;

But all I can see in the pdf file is this Courier font.

Any other ideas? Did anyone successfully export other fonts to pdf?

Stefan

[Oliver Woodford]

Stefan: For some reason the eps file generated by MATLAB's print function doesn't name the fonts correctly. I suggest you contact TMW's technical support. If and when print generates an eps file correctly but print_pdf/export_fig doesn't then generate the correct pdf, then I will investigate further.

[Stefan]

Today the answer of TMW's support team arrived.
They admit that the font support of the print function is limited to a few fonts only up to now.
See http://www.mathworks.com/access/helpdesk/help/techdoc/creating_plots/f3-103191.html#f3-96545

It it not sure if or when this will change.

Thank you Oliver anyway!

I now use Matlab for formatting the figure and the page size. Subsequently I print pdfs using an external pdf printer.