PDF output from MATLAB and inclusion in LaTeX

2
votes

I'm printing some figures in MATLAB in PDF form, and can view them fine with the Evince PDF viewer on Fedora 16.

When I try to include them in LaTeX (TeXLive 2011), however, I get an error

!pdfTeX error: /usr/local/texlive/2011/bin/x86_64-linux/pdflatex (file ./caroti
d_amp_mod_log.pdf): xpdf: reading PDF image failed

However, I can take an example PDF image generated in Mathematica and include it just fine, which tells me that the problem is with the PDF's generated by MATLAB and not with PDF's in general.

Might it have something to do with the set(0,'defaultfigurepaperpositionmode','auto')I put in my startup.m file so that pages would auto-fit the images?

EDIT: I just tried using saveas(figure(1), 'filename.pdf') instead of print(figure(1), 'filename.pdf') and it worked fine, but the PaperPositionMode property is ignored. Any way around this?

2
matlabpdflatex

2 Answers

6
votes

Finally found the problem. The correct way to print images is to use the print(handle, '-dformat', 'filename') syntax.

So, for PDF's, we need print(figure(1), '-dpdf', 'myfigure'). See MATLAB documentation on graphics file formats for more information.

Using print(figure(1), 'filename.pdf') still produces a valid PDF for viewing, but it can't be included in LaTeX.

1
votes

You can try using pdfpages

or pgf

to include pdf files. However, you need to use pdflatex only, as you are doing right now.