export_fig

Exports figures nicely to a number of vector & bitmap formats.

Description

This function saves a figure or single axes to one or more vector and/or bitmap file formats, and/or outputs a rasterized version to the workspace, with the following properties:
   - Figure/axes reproduced as it appears on screen
   - Cropped borders (optional)
   - Embedded fonts (vector formats)
   - Improved line and grid line styles
   - Anti-aliased graphics (bitmap formats)
   - Render images at native resolution (optional for bitmap formats)
   - Transparent background supported (pdf, eps, png)
   - Semi-transparent patch objects supported (png only)
   - RGB, CMYK or grayscale output (CMYK only with pdf, eps, tiff)
   - Variable image compression, including lossless (pdf, eps, jpg)
   - Optionally append to file (pdf, tiff)
   - Vector formats: pdf, eps
   - Bitmap formats: png, tiff, jpg, bmp, export to workspace

This function is especially suited to exporting figures for use in publications and presentations, because of the high quality and portability of media produced.

Note that the background color and figure dimensions are reproduced (the latter approximately, and ignoring cropping & magnification) in the output file. For transparent background (and semi-transparent patch objects), use the -transparent option, and set the axes 'Color' property to 'none' where desired. Pdf, eps and png are the only file formats to support a transparent background, whilst the png format alone supports transparency of patch objects.

When exporting to vector format (pdf & eps), and to bitmap using the painters renderer, this function requires that ghostscript is installed on your system. You can download this from:
   http://www.ghostscript.com
When exporting to eps it additionally requires pdftops, from the Xpdf suite of functions. You can download this from:
   http://www.foolabs.com/xpdf

Usage examples can be found at:
http://sites.google.com/site/oliverwoodford/software/export_fig

When reporting bugs, please use the 'Contact Author' link on my Author page, rather than pasting the error into the comments - I will respond more quickly, especially if I can email you back.

Acknowledgements

The author wishes to acknowledge the following in the creation of this submission:
savefig, Fix dashed and dotted lines in EPS export, FIXPSLINESTYLE, Myaa - My Anti-Alias for Matlab, fix_lines
This submission has inspired the following:
Matlab Icon for Linux (with Transparency), Google Earth Overlay, Multiple Colormaps, ConvertPlot4Publication, append_pdfs, EPS Utility Toolbox

• MATLAB release: MATLAB 7.13 (2011b)
• Other requirements: Ghostscript, Xpdf

[danny]

Hello! How can I use your program to export a MATLAB graph to .eps or .pdf format with size changes ?

Thank you,
dan

[Matt C]

This suite of exportation options is really great! I used to cook up these functions on my own, but with the frontend you created this is now a lot simpler.

When using it I found that the way you are currently implementing ghostscript will destroy the destination file if it already exists. While this may be the intended implementation, let me offer an alternative that could possibly be as useful to others.

I have edited the 'eps2pdf.m' file to allow for appending additional figures to an already existing .pdf file as follows:
<code>

function eps2pdf(source, dest)
% Construct the options string for ghostscript - create new or append
% additional sheets if the destination exists
if (exist(dest, 'file') == 2)
    tmp_nam = tempname;
    copyfile(dest, tmp_nam);
    options = ['-q -dNOPAUSE -dBATCH -dEPSCrop -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -dPDFSETTINGS=/prepress -sOutputFile="' dest '" "' tmp_nam '" -f "' source '"'];
else
    options = ['-q -dNOPAUSE -dBATCH -dEPSCrop -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -dPDFSETTINGS=/prepress -sOutputFile="' dest '" -f "' source '"'];
end
    
% Convert to pdf using ghostscript
ghostscript(options);
return

</code>

I hope some of you can find this modification useful!

[Mohammed Islam]

Hi Oliver,
Thanks soo much for this script. It's of great use for me. So far I haven't had any trouble using it. Just one question, is it possible to use it to control the size of the output file?

Also, thanks to Matt for the addition, Its nice to not replace an existing file and keep adding up additional figues at the bottom. Thats what I wanted to do.

Great job guys. keep it up.

Shameem

[Oliver Woodford]

Dan: Currently the only way to change the exported figure size is to change the Matlab figure size before exporting. To get round this, set the paper size options manually within export_fig.

Matt C: Thanks for the great suggestion.

Shameem/Mohammed: I wanted to keep the interface simple, so unfortunately there is no formal way to control file size. Jpeg file size can be changed by varying the quality setting within export_fig. For more options regarding quality/compression, see savefig (also on the FEX).

[Christian Dorion]

Great piece of work, thanks.

A minor thing though... Under my installation, the private/ghostscript.m function had a minor bug that resulted in the whole function being whipped out and replaced by solely the 'gs' path. Just in case it happens to anyone else, here is a simple patch:

--- MY/private/ghostscript.m
+++ ONLINE/private/ghostscript.m
@@ -103,9 +103,8 @@
 fstrm = fread(fh, '*char')';
 fclose(fh);
 % Find the path
-first_sec = regexp(fstrm, '[\n\r]*function path = current_gs_path[\n\r]*path = ''', 'end', 'once');
-second_sec = first_sec + regexp(fstrm(first_sec+1:end), ''';[\n\r]*return', 'once');
-assert(~isempty(first_sec) && ~isempty(second_sec));
+first_sec = regexp(fstrm, '[\n\r]function path = current_gs_path[\n\r]path = ''', 'end', 'once');
+second_sec = first_sec + regexp(fstrm(first_sec+1:end), ''';[\n\r]return', 'once');
 % Save the file with the path replaced
 fh = fopen(fname, 'wt');
 fprintf(fh, '%s%s%s', fstrm(1:first_sec), path, fstrm(second_sec:end));

[Edgar Guevara Codina]

Great job!
Finally I can get publication-quality graphs in a simple way.
Thanks Oliver for making it easier than ever before.

[wei feng]

Great work! You sir saved me a LOT of time.

I've been using your print_eps function for a while and found this today. However, I have a problem with converting images to eps format that has been bugging me. For example, I have two images in a matlab figure. On both images I have used the "plot" function to plot some lines on the images. The plotted lines are gray in color. When I export them into eps format, the lines on the first image would remain gray. But the lines on the second image would change to black. The same thing happens when I have more than two images with plotted lines, in which case all the plotted lines except in the first image will turn black. I was wondering if you can shed some light on this?

Thanks a lot.

[Stefan]

Great job!

But still one bug: Exporting does not work if axes is child of uipanel. Seems to be some problem when using cobyobj
Can you fix that?

[Daisy Fan]

Nice!

How can I get a high resolution eps, e.g., >300dpi? Matlab's documentation says to use the -r option, e.g.,
  print -deps -r300 myfile
but it actually doesn't work. When I look at the produced eps in a software such as Adobe Photoshop the resolution is just 72dpi. Thanks for you input!

[Gabriel Akira Schreiber]

 

[Gabriel Akira Schreiber]

 

[Johannes Korsawe]

Really nice.
I still have a problem using uipanels (guis):

 If i create a plot and a colorbar, the colorbar will not be printed in the result.

Is it possible to enable for a search for colorbars? I tried to adopt your code but failed in copying the correct stuctures.

To say it with Stefan: Can you fix/enable that?

[Sebastiaan]

 

[cartonn]

how do you export the image with a greater value of dpi?
-r600 does not work

[Jason Mar]

Great function! It saves me a lot of time, thanks!
Wish I could disable cropping more easily though.

[Annette]

I'm trying to use this function with Matlab r2007b on a Mac (OS 10.5), and I get the error:

??? Error using ==> rdivide
Number of array dimensions must match for binary array op.

Error in ==> export_fig at 143
        A = uint8(B ./ A(:,:,[1 1 1]));

Any insight?

Cheers!

[m g]

I am unable to use export_fig on my linux machine
i am using the command
export_fig f.fig -eps
and i get the following error:
'No Figure to Print"
and a Warning /tmp/tmp<long string>.eps not found

please help.
thanks,

[Erica Alston]

Hi

What is the calling sequence for using this function? should the filename be in parentheses? are the output formats the same as used by matlap e.g. -depsc?

Many thanks!

[Oliver Woodford]

m g: The figure you wish to export must be open. You cannot specify it by the filename. The filename is that of the output file, not the input file.

Erica: The filename should be a string. Just like any other MATLAB function, you can call export_fig using parentheses around the input arguments, or not, in which case the inputs are interpreted as strings; i.e. if one of the inputs is not a string then you must use parentheses. The outputs are not the same as those used by print. Type
   help export_fig
for a full description of usage.

[Francesco Montorsi]

 

[Michael Kitz]

I wanted to use this tool to save a jpg with the borders cropped. Now I realized that the axes settings were changed during export.
I was using a figure with three subplots, two graphs and an image.
The plots were displaying 7000 data points in a customized scale using the whole axes area. Matlab's autoscale uses 8000 points and so did the export function.
Is there a way to avoid the autoscale?

[Oliver Woodford]

Michael: MATLAB's print often does funny things to a plot, such as changing the number of tick marks, when you export it, and I don't know how to avoid it. Export_fig uses print, and therefore unfortunately suffers from the same problem.

[Clark Richards]

Great script. It's driven me nuts for a long time that outputting to pdf in Matlab is a headache.

It would be useful if there was an 'append' option for the pdf output. I don't always want to append to the end of a file, often I just want to update a figure and have it overwrite whatever was already there.

[Keely Willis]

I'm having trouble printing to png format, the figures come out completely black. I'm using MATLAB version 2008b. The command I'm using is "export_fig filename -png".

Thanks for any advice.

[Oliver Woodford]

A reminder for everyone: As I say in the description, please do email me (use the "Contact Author link on my author page) when you have a problem, rather than place it here. I'll respond quicker, and also people finding the function won't think it never works!

[Keely Willis]

My graphics driver was out of date. Since I updated the driver, everything work perfectly. Thanks!

[Bob]

 

[Bob]

Wish I had found this great script sooner!

Can someone tell me how to set the color property to 'none'. If you set edit figure and then use the property editor you only get an option for color (e.g. a palette), you can't type in 'none'. I'm missing something obvious here, can someone please help me with this.

[Oliver Woodford]

Bob:
set(gcf, 'color', 'none'); % Set the figure background to transparent
set(gca, 'color', 'none'); % Set the axes background to transparent

[Bob]

Oliver, thanks very much but something is funny. If I have the property editor open for the original figure the color is white. I run the set commands and the color is none. I then use export_fig and the color goes back to white (as seen in the Property Manager), and the figure has a white background (export_fig foo.png -pdf; OS X 10.6.2, 2009b). Same white background on the pdf and the png.

[Yvonne Haesevoets]

Absolutely awesome!! If only I had found this sooner!! Thanks for sharing!
How can I increase the resolution? The -m option increases the file size, not the resolution.

[Yvonne Haesevoets]

...and how do you preserve the line style in tiff files e.g.? Thanks again!

[Oliver Woodford]

A useful aspect of export_fig is that it can output the rasterized figure as an image array. For example, you can use this output to save the figure in grayscale, or with a specific resolution (pixels/inch value).

[Xuezhong Wang]

 

[Yvonne Haesevoets]

Thanks for the last version, which solves the line-style issue!

[Oliver Woodford]

For improved rendering of dashed and dotted lines in bitmap outputs (especially at higher magnifications) you can now use the painters renderer:
   export_fig test.png -painters
However, see the help text for notes on the impact of using different renderers.

[Muhammad]

Hello and good day,
thanks for a great submission.
I'd like to know how do I save a figure along with the directory path,like the one i figured with imwrite function
    imwrite(img,sprintf(directory/name.jpg))

[Oliver Woodford]

Call export_fig using the functional form to have functional and numerical input arguments, e.g.:
export_fig(figure_handle, sprintf('directory/name%d.jpg', n), '-a2', '-painters');

[Muhammad]

yep,it worked well.thanks again

[Muhammad]

I noticed the image (.jpg) produced doesn't have the same size (eg. 600 x 800) with the input image.how do I set the size to be the same?

[Oliver Woodford]

Muhammad: This depends on the size of the on screen figure, and the magnification you're applying - you can change these two things to get the output you want. However, it is rarely a good idea to save an image at native resolution by exporting a figure containing the image. I suggest you post what you are trying to do to the newsgroup and ask for suggestions of alternative approaches.

[Muhammad]

hi again,

thanks for a very helpful hint,i tried using various value of magnification and anti-aliasing until i get the perfect pair to get the native resolution.

[Madhusudhan]

Very useful fix for missing functionality within Matlab.

[xtofe xtofe]

very useful it is indeed.

How the resolution of the final file could be changed?
e.g., 300dpi, 400dpi, etc.

Any ideas??

[Oliver Woodford]

xtofe xtofe:
Set the magnification as follows -
   dpi = 300;
   mag = dpi / get(0, 'ScreenPixelsPerInch');
   export_fig('name.png', sprintf('-m%g', mag));

[Jean-Baptiste Carré]

 

[Jonas]

Very useful program!

1) When you print to .eps, you print to .eps, then convert to .pdf, then back to .eps. Why?

2) On OS X, the uigetdir file dialog does not show the title. Thus, when the user is asked to provide the path to pdftops, it is not clear at all what is going on. I suggest adding the following before line 60 of pdftops.m:
if ismac
wh = warndlg('pdftops not found. Please locate the program, or install xpdf-tools from http://users.phg-online.de/tk/MOSXS/.');
uiwait(wh)
end

[Oliver Woodford]

Jonas:
I convert from eps to pdf then back to eps because I know how to set the quality of bitmap compression and how to embed fonts when saving to pdf through ghostscript, but not when saving to eps. My hack is therefore to save as a pdf to get these things right, then use software which converts a pdf to eps without changing anything in those respects.

If anyone knows of a more direct approach please let me know.

[viktor]

Hi Oliver,

Your file works great but is there a way to apply it to simulink systems? you can print a picture of your model but cropping is very hard.

Viktor

[Oliver Woodford]

In response to comments by Muhammad and xtofe xtofe I've added the -native and -r<val> options respectively.

Viktor: I don't have or use Simulink, unfortunately, so can't address your issue. Simulink support was never claimed, though, and I hope the function does everything it says on the tin.

[Michael Johnston]

Extremely useful.

[Roland]

 

[Shai Sabbah]

Great program.

However, I’ve encounter a small difficulty.
I’m trying to export a B&W figure that includes solid, dashed, and dotted lines at a resolution of 350 dpi in tif format. However, in the tif image, dashed lines look like dotted lines, and the dotted lines look like solid gray lines.

I’ve tried all the four anti-aliasing levels.

Is there a way to export in high resolution tif format while keeping the appearance of the lines similar to the original?

Thanks a lot,
Shai

[Oliver Woodford]

Shai: The line style problem can be fixed by specifying the painters algorithm, using the -painters option. Note you need ghostscript installed for this to work.

[Shai Sabbah]

Oliver: Thank you very much.
Finally I can produce nice figures with Matlab.
Shai

[Glenn Fulford]

 

[shuangou ren]

very useful. simpler use with respect to the laprint

[Glenn Fulford]

 

[Sylvain Fa]

Very good function. I am using it for a while now without any problem. I have just noticed that when a figure contain a:
"text(...,'interpreter','latex')" then the function print2eps does not set the boundingbox properly or at least the figure is not cropped when using eps2pdf.

A closer look at this showed that when the latex interpreter is used, the obtained eps file (with the MATLAB print function) contained font information. This might interfer somehow. Any idea how to solve this issue?

[Adam A]

Very useful, thanks.

[Jared]

How does one export with embedded fonts? For instance, can one export using Myriad Pro?

[Oliver Woodford]

Jared: Fonts should be embedded in exported pdfs by default, and also in eps files (the latter depending on what pdftops executable you have on your system). You need to import a figure into Myriad Pro before exporting from it - I suggest you ask the newsgroup if you need help with this.

[Royi Avital]

You need to clarify the syntax a bit more (I don't understand how to turn Anti Aliasing off, Triad -a1 with no difference, I guess I don't write the syntax how it should be).
Adding some examples for usages of the Syntax would be great!

[Oliver Woodford]

Royi: This will generate two images, one with anti-aliasing and one without -
   export_fig aa.png
   export_fig no_aa.png -a1
The anti-aliasing option can be used with any other combination of options. Note that the anti-aliasing settings only affect bitmap outputs. They make no difference to vector outputs such as pdf and eps files.

[Philip Valencia]

Top job Oliver - great utility with a tonne of functionality.
The -painters option is great. I can render a graph from the command line with transparent axis and background and save it onto my desktop (with geektool). It looks so awesome and it wouldn't be possible without these scripts.

[Daniel]

 

[Daniel]

this program is great. I have tried several hacks over the years to do something similar, but not worked this clean.

When specifying a path in the file name it works for all formats except pdf and eps. These will only save to the current directory. Is there a way to specify the path in the call? Currently I just cd to the desired directory and then cd back to where I was.

Thanks for the work and for sharing.

[Daniel]

I was wrong, it does work to include the path in the file name. I just can't use a '~' as a short cut to my home directory. At least not with a Mac. Using the full path works for all formats, and the '~' works for everything expect pdf and eps.

Oliver, thanks for your help troubleshooting this for me!

[Dan]

Very nice script, I use it all the time.

Just one thing, when saving to a .pdf it seems to mess up transparent elements on the the plot and make them opaque.

Is there a way to remedy this?

Cheers!

[Oliver Woodford]

Dan: Unfortunately this can't be avoided. The painters renderer used for vector graphics doesn't support transparency. For more details see here:
http://www.mathworks.com/access/helpdesk/help/techdoc/creating_plots/f3-84337.html#f3-102410

[Joachim Schlosser]

A great script. Along with the hints in article http://blogs.mathworks.com/loren/2007/12/11/making-pretty-graphs/ this makes pretty nice graphics!

[Joseph]

 

[Mark]

 

[Matthew Arthington]

 

[Vinesh Rajpaul]

 

[Vinesh Rajpaul]

Good documentation, easy to use, and does the job very well! Thanks!

[David Lloyd]

Superb function and documentation. You deserve a big fat check from Mathworks for doing something long overdue. In the mean time please accept my grateful thanks :)

[Monique Messié]

Very useful function even though I'm far from having explored all the possibilities.
One question: when saving a figure with a transparent background, the autocrop doesn't work. Any reason for that? any way to still get autocrop?
Example:
figure, plot(1:10), set(gcf,'Color','w'), set(gca, 'color', 'w','XLim',[0 20]);, axis off, export_fig test % (autocrop)
figure, plot(1:10), set(gcf,'Color','none'), set(gca, 'color', 'none','XLim',[0 20]);, axis off, export_fig test2 % (doesn't autocrop)
Thanks!

[Oliver Woodford]

Monique: The cropping works fine on my system with the figures you give. No-one else has reported this problem either, so I would say that the autocropping does work, and that your comment is misleading to other users. Read on if you would like me to investigate your specific problem further.

Everyone: As I've stated twice on this page already, please do email me (use the "Contact Author link on my author page) when you have a problem (assuming you've checked everywhere and can't find a solution), rather than place it here. I'll respond quicker, be able to request figures and results, and also people finding the function won't think it never works!

[Nick Fyson]

Excellent function, makes it easy to produce high quality figures. (Normally look significantly better than in the figure window itself.) Never had a single problem with it.

[Matthijs Klomp]

I have used print_pdf for all my publications.

[Craig]

Great function(s) - thanks Oliver. It works very well in concert with 'maximize.m'.

Like so many others I'm at a loss to understand why such functionality isn't built-in to MATLAB. I had reached the point of saving my images as MATLAB 'fig' format and copying and pasting into other documents to try to preserve some quality. I have one small, almost insignificant, suggestion:

Could a additional resolution option be included so that resolution can be specified as a percentage of 'native' rather than only relative to the size on screen? Is there a simple way to do this already using the -r switch?

I've also noticed that MATLAB (Win7 64-bit R2010b) produces a scary warning "Warning: print2array generating a 185.1M pixel image. This could be slow and might also cause memory problems." when in fact the image size is one-tenth that with -m set to 10. It's not important but had me worried until I realised it was bunkum.

Thanks again,
Craig.

[Oliver Woodford]

Craig: Intermediate images can be larger than the output image if antialiasing is used, so the warning is correct. Your suggestion of an additional resolution option has been noted - thanks.

[Craig]

Thanks for the response. It has occured to me that the resolution can be set relative to native by just resizing the image prior to display then using the -native switch. Rather than modifying the function, perhaps add a note to your website for people who are slow on the uptake like me?

Thanks again, Craig.

[Oliver Woodford]

Craig: Nice observation. Done.

[Julia]

Dear Oliver,

thanks for saving my (publication) life.

Julia

[mathworks2011]

 

[Tobias Lamour]

Hi Oliver,
Thanks for your incredible work here! You saved me lots of time already you triple the value of Matlab without a shadow of a doubt.
Please carry on as you did.
Cheers, Tobi

[Ask Svane]

Great work!

[Ask Svane]

 

[Rossella]

This is a really useful and well written funnction. Thanks a lot!

[Joseph LIM]

 

[Elsa Birch]

Many thanks!

[Reinhard]

 

[Reinhard]

Thanks Oliver, we've been using your code for a while and especially use the PDF export function. One thing that we have noticed is that if you append a lot (30+) of plots to the same PDF the process becomes much slower as the PDF gets bigger. Do you know what causes this?

[Oliver Woodford]

Reinhard: No, this isn't something I've investigated. One possibility is that the slowness comes from export_fig copying the file before appending to it, for error recovery reasons. You could take this step out of eps2pdf.m and see what happens. Otherwise it's down to ghostscript, which I have no control over.

[Image Analyst]

I'm not sure I understand your screenshot. Why the double images superimposed?

[Oliver Woodford]

ImageAnalyst: It demonstrates that you can export figures with transparency information (as one is visible through the other). Probably not very intuitive, though.

[Reinhard]

FYI: I've just tried creating temporary PDF files using export_fig, and then appending them in a single go using ghostscript. It's much faster that way. Ghostscript obviously optimizes the call if it receives all the file names to append simultaneously.

[Oliver Woodford]

Reinhard: Thank you. That could be very useful info for some people out there.

[Bogdan]

Hi Oliver,

when I create a pdf file and include it in Latex the blue color get washed in the Latex document. However, it is okay in the created pdf itself. Do you have any idea why, as it looks really bad. Other included pdfs created with the print command do not have this issue.

[Oliver Woodford]

Bogdan: This sort of issue is best emailed to me as a minimal working example.

[Oleg Komarov]

I'll start using matlab graphics thanks to your function!

[Meggy Dessagne]

Seems to be really good but cannot manage to run the code. A window is opened and displays "Ghostcript not found. Please locate the program.", I select the file containing the program, the window is then closed but is reopened few seconds after with the same message and so on, it is like a loop.
Somebody can help me?

[Oliver Woodford]

Meggy: Make sure that you have installed ghostcript (not the ghostscript.m MATLAB function) as per the instructions, then select the folder which contains the ghostscript program when prompted. If you have any more problems please contact me directly, as requested several times on this page already.

[Reza]

Great function!

When working with images, that would be great to export the lines, texts, legend, etc. in a vector format and the images in a pixel format (ideally both in one pdf file). You might know that there has been some work done in the original exportfig http://www.mathworks.com/company/newsletters/digest/december00/export.html

I think it will be a great feature!

[Katharina Schaefer]

Hi Oliver, thanks a lot for a great script. I am a mac user (os x 10.6) and had some trouble with ghostscript. On this website http://www.linuxfoundation.org/collaborate/workgroups/openprinting/macosx/hpijs you can download GPL Ghostscript (dmg file). This worked for me.

[Martin]

 

[farzad]

Hi
Thanks for sharing this very useful file.
I have a problem with using export_fig with maximize. May be someone can help. When I use maximize I have to add pause (at least 0.5 sec) before export_fig otherwise it saves the small size version. Here is the order of commands:
h = figure;
maximize(h);
plot ...
export_fig test.bmp -m2

------------------------
R2009b on Win 7, 32 bit

[Oliver Woodford]

Farzad: This is an issue with maximize, and not export_fig.

[Oliver Woodford]

Farzad: However, a solution is to call drawnow just before export_fig.

[farzad]

Thanks Oliver. I'll try to replace maximize with something else.

[farzad]

I didnt know about drawnow. It works better with graphics and I learned a new command. Thank you very much Oliver.
Success

[Martin]

 

[Liang Zhan]

actually it's Walter Roberson refer me to use your function, excellent, it solve me a big problem, appreciate for your code!!!

[Dan]

New file exchange interface is just not working. No "download" option displayed and "Watch this File" sends you in a loop between the current page and the "Watchlist" without actually showing the file.

Any suggestions?

[Oliver Woodford]

Dan: There is a large blue "Download All" button at the top right of the page. Did you try that? It worked for me.

[Dan]

Thank you Oliver. I honestly did not notice it. The interface of the File Exchange has changed quite a bit recently and yours is the first file I download. The clarity of the tag "Download All" could be disputed though.

[farzad]

Hi Oliver
I have a question regarding the export_fig use in a for loop. In the examples, you gave this format for it:

export_fig(sprintf('plot%d.png', a));

what if I want to use additional arguments as well such as disabling the anti-aliasing which originally is:
export_fig plot.png -a1
I tried different formats to pass the value of 'a' parameter to export_fig in the loop but I failed. Shouldnt it be like this:
export_fig(sprintf('plot%d.png', i),a);
where a (anti-aliasing value) is the second input argument to export_fig ?!

I appreciate your great work it.

[Oliver Woodford]

farzad: MATLAB has to ways of passing variables to functions. Withough brackets, every input is considered to be a string. With brackets, you need to specify what is a string and what isn't using ''. This is completely standard. So in your case do:
  export_fig(sprintf('plot%d.png', a), '-a1');

[farzad]

Ah, I made a mistake in that. Thanks for correcting me Oliver. export_fig is really great. Although it doesn't need to mention. 908 downloads just in the last 30 days!!!

[Matthijs Klomp]

 

[farzad]

 

[nsbd]

 

[Shiguo]

 

[farzad]

Hi Oliver,

This might not be a good question but if you change your display to portrait, is it then possible to save figures in landscape? I guess not since it is said that the figure is saved exactly like it is on the screen.

[Oliver Woodford]

Farzad: As you say, export_fig saves the figure as it appears on screen, and you can have a landscape-shaped figure on a portrait-oriented display, no problem.

[A Hussein]

This is the most wonderful program! Thank you :)

[Céldor]

Hi there,

This is brilliant function. It helped me to export figures properly to eps. The only thing is that it still substitutes and exports a figure with wrong fonts.

[farzad]

to Zbigniew:
What do you mean by wrong font? isnt it the original font you see before exporting?! It exports the figure as the way you see on the screen. If you want another font you have to change it before using export_fig command.

[Oliver Woodford]

Farzad: export_fig has the same font issue as print, as described on my usage and examples web page (link in description above).

[Céldor]

@farzad
In EPS files which I export my figures to, all fonts are changed to different ones. Arial is changed to Helvetica, Arial Narrow is changed to Courier, etc.

[Sherif]

Very useful. Thank you.

[Emily]

 

[pvans]

Hi Oliver,

I would like to save an figure with both

1) an image object inside of it saved at native resolution

2) control over the size of the whitespace outside of that image's axes, in pixels.

Your '-native' option works well for 1), but it seems that in order to accomplish 2) simultaneously, I need to resize the figure without resizing the image. I can do this by setting the image axes 'Units' property to 'Pixels' (instead of the default 'Normalized'), but that change seems to make export_fig work incorrectly. Is there a way to do this with your program?

[Austin]

Thanks for this.

Mathworks, it's ridiculous that I have to resort to third-party packages to programmatically export my figures. Every time I come across some problem like this it moves me closer and closer to doing all my development with numpy/scipy.

[Oliver Woodford]

pvans: You can control the amount of whitespace around an axes by setting the axes' position and using export_fig's -nocrop option.

[Dan K]

Hi Oliver,
Very nice. One question: I am also fighting with the whitespace outside of copied images. Your cropping seems to do the job nicely. Is there a way to use export_fig to export to the clipboard?
Thanks,
Dan

[Oliver Woodford]

Dan: No, there isn't. However, you can output the image as an array, so if you find a way of copying an array to the clipboard as an image you're there.

[Dan K]

Oliver,
Thanks for the response... Following your suggestion, I found IMCLIPBOARD (http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/28708-imclipboard) which does just that. Now if I can just find one that outputs to clipboard in vector format.
Dan

[Eli]

Great software.

How do you control the size of the output PDF or EPS? I want to reduce the size.

In addition, the -painters option does not work for me, in pdf/eps files. I tried it on various linux and win systems.

[Oliver Woodford]

Eli: Are you refering to file size or paper size? File size can be changed using the -qXX option, e.g. -q50, though it only affects the images in files. If paper size, change the figure size.

If you want me to assist you with errors then I suggest you follow the instructions at the end of the description.

[Eli]

Thanks Oliver. I am referring to the size of the image (in Kb). If you have many pictures in your file, the document size grows quickly and cannot be submitted. I already tried -q30 etc, -r, it has no effect. The gs command with options in linux can reduce the size (not so nice), but I want to do everything in export_fig. I guess I have to re-program my plot.

I would like to thank you for this code. It has served me good in past weeks !

Suggestion: put set(gcf, 'Color', 'w') in default. It scares off newcomers to see those, often unwanted, margins.

Is -painters option supposed to work on pdf/eps files on any system?

[Oliver Woodford]

Eli: Yes, -painters works on all systems. If you have a specific problem you should contact me directly.

[Brad]

This function is fantastic. Whats more, is that it can be incorporated into my functions, so that I can save multiple plots and figures in glorious high resolution. I love it and its so easy to use!

However, I've been copying all the export_fig files located in the export_fig folder to current working directory (which changes often). This works, but I don't want to do it everytime I start working in a new directory and I want to make figures.

Is there a way to put export_fig in its own folder (perhaps C:/Program Files/Export Fig/export_fig) and call it from my current directory without changing back and forth to that directory? Also, I'd like to use options like -painters and -r200.

Thanks Oliver!

[Oliver Woodford]

Brad: You can use -painters and -r200. If it doesn't do what you expect then contact me directly. Also, just put the files on your MATLAB path to avoid moving them to your current directory - that is standard and nothing to do with export_fig, though.

[Jie]

Hi, Oliver, the export_fig is really a great tool which helps a lot to my paper. Thank you.

But, I got a problem when I want to export a 3D surface produced by 'mesh' or 'surf'. Although the output in the figure window of Matlab is normal, the exported figure are covered with white tin network, which is especially evident for gray surface.

Actually, you can find the white tin network on the icon of export_fig at the top of this webpage (the nice color surface produced by this tool is covered with white tin network).

This problem is deriving me crazy in recent days. I tried to change various line properties, however, it never works.

[Oliver Woodford]

Jie: I explain the reason for this on the examples webpage. It's your PDF reader at fault, but it means that 3D surfaces are better exported as bitmaps.

[Jie]

Hi, Oliver, thank you for your swift reply. You know, Google is fighting against with the Chinese government, and I can not see the examples and explanations listed in google site.

What you mean is that the paper-printed figure will not show such tin network? However, when I try to save the bmp and jpg format, I got following error:
setting PBuffer for OpenGL printing: invalid drawable.

Interestingly, I did save jpg file several days before. I do not know why I can not save bmp now.

[Oliver Woodford]

Jie: Yes, the lines should not be visible in printed figures. Also, try the zbuffer renderer if opengl fails.

[Jie]

Hi, Oliver, thank you so much for your kind help. The zbuffer renderer works for me. However, I still prefer the EPS output than BMP (it blurs when zoom out or zoom in). As what you said, the white tin network did have different appearances in different applications.

Thank you once again for your kind help.

[Sébastien]

 

[Patrick Maletinsky]

 

[Patrick Maletinsky]

Great script - thanks a lot Oliver!

I recently upgraded from Matlab R2009a to R2011a, which caused a problem with export_fig: after the upgrade, figures exported to .pdf (and/or .eps) have a fixed paper-size of US legal (i.e. typically a lot of white space around my figures). I can't find a way to alter the paper size of my exported figures in Matlab now. When I ran export_fig on Matlab R2009a, the paper-size after exporting with export_fig used to be set by the original figure size. Any ideas how I can get back to these settings?

[Oliver Woodford]

Patrick: I just installed R2011a on a Vista 32-bit machine and ran
   plot(rand(3));
   export_fig test.pdf;
It worked as expected.

[weijie]

You save me thesis!

[Jiaqi]

 

[Patrick Maletinsky]

Oliver: Thanks much for checking! I just repeated what you did (plot(rand(3)); export_fig test.pdf;) and sure enough, the output-pdf contains the figure with the (standard) gray background on a letter-sized white background.
Since things work out on your installation it might have something to do with my Matlab settings/preferences (?). I didn't set anything special though and also checked on a couple of other machines of colleagues of mine and the scheme seems consistent: R2011a yields letter-sized outputs and all earlier installations do what I tell them to do.

If anybody knows a solution to this problem, I would greatly appreciate. For now, I just run export_fig on older versions of Matlab only ;-)

Again, thanks for this great script in any case, Oliver!!!

P.S.: This was all on Windows XP 32-bit machines.

[Oliver Woodford]

Patrick: A clean install of R2011a and export_fig on a 32-bit XP machine yielded a cropped, correctly sized figure for me just now. Sorry not to be more help!

[Martin]

Hi
   This is a very very useful function. But I have one problem. I am not able to get the same screen resolution while exporting quiver plots. I export quiver plots to .tiff files and then I open it in Imagej. But the arrows appear very blurry as I zoom in. I tried the following:

export_fig test.tiff -m2 -r 250

It would be great if you can help me with this.

Thanks
Sundar

[Oliver Woodford]

I'm afraid I won't be responding to requests for help in this comments section from now on. The help text and web page are more than detailed enough. Bug reports can be emailed directly to me.

[Peter]

Works excellently. Found out how to make CMYK tiffs for publication. Follow this code:

figure('InvertHardcopy','off','Color',[1 1 1]); % Force the background to be white
plot(x, y);
export_fig([filepath filename 'full'], '-tif', '-cmyk', '-r300'); % For CMYK 300 DPI tiff images

[Peter]

Be warned, you *will* need to tune image parameters to make your image file consistent with the results from saveas.

[David Wang]

 

[Ole]

This code is of great help! Can anyone say whether or how tiff previews/thumbnails can be included into eps files?

[Oliver Woodford]

Ole: Export_fig doesn't support embedding tiff previews in eps files, sadly. It's probably possible to do with an external application, and if it has a command line interface you could write a MATLAB wrapper for it.

[apañero]

There is a problem if you want to keep the same resolution and document size as the original image.

With a 180dpi image and 7 x 7cm size
export_fig image -tif -native
Image exported is 96dpi and 13 x 13cm size (same overall resolution but different dimensions)

If I use -r180
Image exported is 180dpi but 13 x 13cm and double pixel size (again, same overall resulution but image dimensions are wrong).

export_fig image -tif -native

[Oliver Woodford]

apañero: Use the -r180 option to set the dpi in the image file correctly (Otherwise how is export_fig supposed to know the dpi? That information isn't stored anywhere in the figure.). Then set the image size so you get the desired output resolution (size of image in pixels). In your case the image size on screen should be 7cm x 7cm.

[Shaun]

Heads up, set(gcf,'color','none') is going away. I am getting warnings..

[Oliver Woodford]

Shaun: Thanks. I understand a big change to the way MATLAB handles graphics is coming at some point. When it does I expect export_fig will break in many ways. For now you can disable the warnings.

[Erika]

 

[Felix Zoergiebel]

I have problems with calling ghostscript (and also pdf2ps) from MATLAB R2011b on OS X 10.6.8. system('/opt/local/bin/gs') gives me this error:

dyld: Library not loaded: /opt/local/lib/libfreetype.6.dylib
  Referenced from: /opt/local/lib/libfontconfig.1.dylib
  Reason: Incompatible library version: libfontconfig.1.dylib requires version 14.0.0 or later, but libfreetype.6.dylib provides version 10.0.0
/opt/local/bin/gs: Trace/breakpoint trap

I fixed the problem by deleting MATLABs DYLD_PATH_LIBRARY variable before calling ghostscript in ghostscript.m:

[varargout{1:nargout}] = system(sprintf('export DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH=""; /opt/local/bin/gs %s', cmd));

Same should work for pdf2ps.m.

This problem does not exist on MATLAB 7.4, since there is no libfreetype.6.dylib in the MATLAB installation. Hope that this little report helps somebody else.

[Onkar Singh Gujral]

very good

[Sam Hallman]

 

[Sam Hallman]

I use export_fig all the time and I love it. I've made a lot of wonderful figures thanks to this tool. The web documentation is excellent.

[Son Hua]

 

[Cameron Sparr]

 

[pietro]

This function is really great, but the eps quality isn't good as the pdf one. Do you have any suggestion?

[Anuj]

 

[Daniel]

Hey Oliver,
thanks for that impressive tool. One problem/question:
I got a square axes in a 16:10 figure. Although I use
set(gcf, 'InvertHardcopy', 'off', 'Color', 'black')
the figure background (not axes bg) and legend texts are getting inverted (also with print()). Is there any way to prevent that? I also used -transparent, but without success.

Thanks, Daniel

[owr]

 

[John Colby]

This is my favorite FileExchange submission. Period. I've been using it for over a year, and can't imagine going back to the old way. Thanks, Oliver!

[Rene]

 

[Rene]

You are one of my favourite persons now. THANK YOU!!

[Chris]

This is great.

Does anyone know how I can add bookmarks to a multi-page pdf file?

Thanks

[Ankur Pawar]

Very useful function.

[Sebastien PARIS]

 

[Nathan Tomlin]

 

[Xin]

Very useful package to export beautiful figures.

[Renwen Lin]

v good!

[Ioannis Filippidis]

Works perfectly, thanks! Very powerful in combination with LaTeX annotated axes, title and legend, with export to PDF for use in XeTeX. More direct than other methods (e.g. laprint, PStricks, METAPOST, TikZ exports).

[Ingo]

 

[Darren Price]

Why on earth is this not part of matlab as default? Sort it out Mathworks people need this type of thing!

[Petteri T]

 

[Zoe Zhang]

 

[Kemal]

There are problems when exporting figures containing two transparent patches (using patch.m and setting 'facealpha' 0.7).

set(gca,'Color','none')
export_fig 'filename.png' -transparent

this results in a correct png-figure, however I need a higher resolution picture than the default. Using the following command

set(gca,'Color','none')
export_fig 'filename.png' -transparent -m2

the picture gets screwed up: weird misalignments in the upper half of the figure.
Is there a fix for this problem? Exporting a figure with transparent patches to png in high quality (if it would work for eps as well I'd be thrilled).

Thanks!

[Kemal]

Needless to say the Matlab functions don't work.

[Oliver Woodford]

Kemal: MATLAB cannot save transparency using the painters algorithm, so transparency in eps cannot be supported in export_fig either. You can save vector graphics with transparency by exporting to svg (http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/7401), then convert to eps using an external program.

As for the bug, if you want me to look into it please follow my many requests and contact me directly.

[sunil anandatheertha]

wowwww...! Thanks a lot for this great share. Still a beginner here,, :),, and your codes are giving me a lot to learn.

Extremely useful.. Am sharing the links with frnds.. B)

[alexancer]

One problem is when I export eps file from a surface graph from thousands of data points. The size the exported file is very large, almost 40MB for each.

[Oliver Woodford]

alexancer: Yes. I don't recommend exporting large patch-based objects to EPS. Better to create a resterized version (e.g. export to PNG) then embed in an EPS file using an external application.

[Ken Campbell]

Oliver was extremely helpful when I contacted him with a question. His page
http://sites.google.com/site/oliverwoodford/software/export_fig
also provides many helpful tips.

[Giorgio]

 

[Kevin Moerman]

I've tested this for some patch graphics and pdf export. If I just use: export_fig test.pdf, Then for intersecting patch objects (without transparency)it sometimes places the wrong patch objects in front.

Other than that very nice.

[Jinwei Gu]

 

[Wonsang You]

 

[Chad Greene]

Excellent. This has worked wonders for my PowerPoint presentations.

[Kiron]

Great work!

[Igor]

 

[Bijesh]

thanks a lot!

[Umberto]

Wow, this is incredible! Finally the long and arduous journey of finding a function that prints cropped vector quality figures is complete. I would give it 6 stars if I could. Cannot thank you enough man. Fantastic work, much appreciated.

[Blake Richards]

 

[Jaroslaw Tuszynski]

Very useful function. i found it especially useful for creating images for PowerPoint presentations which were small enough to be send by email.

[Yuri Kotliarov]

Oliver, I have a problem exporting bar-plot to PDF if I set the FaceVertexCData property. The output has no plot, only empty axes.

Here is a code example:
hx = bar(rand(10,1),'hist');
fvcd = zeros(10,3) + 0;
fvcd(1:5,:) = 0.5;
set(hx,'EdgeColor','none','FaceColor','flat','FaceVertexCData', fvcd)
export_fig test -pdf

[Oliver Woodford]

Yuri: Please, this is not the place for bug reports; see my comments on emailing me directly. I have added a note on this issue to the export_fig web page (link at the top).

[Yuri Kotliarov]

Thanks, Oliver. I've solved the problem by using colors from colormap. Thanks for surely the best submission. (Just found that I haven't rate it yet.)

[Bosheng]

I like the transparency!!

[Andrey]

 

[Estee]

For a long time I've been frustrated that saving .fig's will result in (for some reason) 3D sized images that are not the same size as the original image! This function is awesome, thanks!

[Estee]

 

[John Reinert Nash]

 

[sam p]

Great job.!!

[Scott]

Handy! One suggestion: if the output directory doesn't exist, offer to make it. I expected this because it already makes directories for the different file types.

[none]

hi oliver.

great bit of code. I have been using it for years.

I think I may have just found a bug though:

I am running MATLAB 2010B on win7 (64bit).

if you run:

figure;
T = 2048;
x=randn(1,T);
plot(x)
set(gca, 'YTick', [-1 0 1])
str2={'-p' ' 0' '+p'};
set(gca,'YTickLabel',str2,'fontname','symbol');
export_fig('D:\test', '-PDF');

you see that export_fig "unconverts" the symbol back to plain text and exports it as plain text.

can you comment on this?

I have also posted on the matlab site so others can see too.

best wishes

[Oliver Woodford]

none: Currently fontnames are case sensitive. Use 'Symbol'.

[b]

Hi,

This is the first time off exchange I am trying to use.
I have copied the zip content into my current folder. It still prompts that it cannot find the functions. Even after again adding the path, it cannot find pdftops even though I see it in the directory.

As I need transparency, I cannot use painters or zbuffer. Should I expect quality improvement with this set of tools then?

In the meantime, how do I save a pdf of the figure only and not a page?

Cheers

[John]

I am wondering if anyone has found a good technique for using export_fig to automatically paste figures into a word document. i use save2word often, but haven't figured out how to link the two up. Also, I must be doing something wrong with the resolution, so if anyone has a good example of how to get good resolution (for a .PNG maybe?) I would appreciate the advice.

[b]

Hi,

This is the first time off exchange I am trying to use.
I have copied the zip content into my current folder. It still prompts that it cannot find the functions. Even after again adding the path, it cannot find pdftops even though I see it in the directory.

As I need transparency, I cannot use painters or zbuffer. Should I expect quality improvement with this set of tools then?

In the meantime, how do I save a pdf of the figure only and not a page?

Cheers

[Antoine C]

Thanks a lot for sharing that powerfull founction.

[Hin Kwan Wong]

Thanks, works great. I've tried mat2pgf, mat2tikz, fig2texps, mlf2pdf, none worked with a complex figure I have. This works perfect.

[Hin Kwan Wong]

 

[Haonan Chen]

good job

[Zhiyong]

Was having trouble saving figures in high resolution, since there seem to be no inbuilt functions that allow this. This user-created function was great. I have an enquiry on the '-native' option of export_fig. Seems like one must specify the desired high resolution himself.

[Hamidreza Nourzadeh]