CODEWITHSUNDEEP
matlab
Mark Hughes
Mark Hughes

Reputation: 245

MATLAB Saving multiple figures to a PDF

Is there any way to do this?

I know how to use saveas (saveas(1, filename, 'pdf');) to save one figure to a PDF file, but is it possible to add multiples? So something like (saveas(1,2,3) filename, 'pdf'));.

Thanks

Upvotes: 7

Views: 21578

Answers (5)

transversality condition
transversality condition

Reputation: 791

The MATLAB-PDFLaTeX solution

Using MATLAB's publish command is a great solution, as other answers have pointed out. If you are looking for more control in terms of how the different figures are combined, another solution is to use pdflatex to compile the figures into a single PDF.

  1. Print the figures to PDF
  2. Generate LaTeX code which includes the figures
  3. Compile with PDFLaTeX

Below is a proof of concept which takes a file name as a char and some number of function_handles and produces a PDF which contains those figures. 

function res = save2pdf(name,varargin)
pathToPdflatex = '/Library/TeX/texbin/pdflatex' ; 

files = cell(size(varargin)) ;
for ii = 1:numel(varargin)
    files{ii} = sprintf('%s_fig%g.pdf',name,ii) ;
    print(varargin{ii},'-dpdf','-painters',files{ii}) ;
end

fh = fopen(sprintf('%s.tex',name),'w+') ;
fprintf(fh,'\\documentclass{article}\n') ;
fprintf(fh,'\\usepackage{graphicx}\n') ;
fprintf(fh,'\\begin{document}\n') ;
for ii = 1:numel(files)
    fprintf(fh,'\\includegraphics[width=\\textwidth]{%s}\n\\newpage\n',files{ii}) ;
end
fprintf(fh,'\\end{document}\n') ;
fclose(fh) ;

[~,res] = system(sprintf('%s %s.tex',pathToPdflatex,name)) ;
disp(res)
end

Example: 

n = 1e+5 ;
x0 = cumsum(randn(n,1)) ;
x1 = cumsum(randn(n,1)) ;
f0 = figure() ;
f1 = figure() ;
ax0 = axes('Parent',f0) ;
ax1 = axes('Parent',f1) ;
plot(ax0,x0) ;
plot(ax1,x1) ;

save2pdf('my_figures',f0,f1)

voila:

...
Output written on my_figures.pdf (2 pages, 169718 bytes).
Transcript written on my_figures.log.

Upvotes: 3

Mahaveer Jain
Mahaveer Jain

Reputation: 106

There is no inbuild command to save all figure in one pdf, there are many workaround tough

  1. Create pdf files for each figure and combine them using software which are easily available.

  2. There is script called Export_fig (http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/23629) which can save figures in single pdf

  3. Save all figures in .ps format and convert .ps into PDF (I find quite easy to use). fname = 'test.ps'; print ( '-dpsc2', fname, '-f1' ) print ( '-dpsc2', fname, '-append', '-f2' )

Upvotes: 0

Torgrim Brochmann
Torgrim Brochmann

Reputation: 269

Late reply, but I thought I'd add that you could use the publish command and publish to pdf. Create an m-file 'myfile.m' with the plot commands, as in 

plot(x1,y1);
plot(x2,y2);

Then run this file using

publish('myfile.m', 'pdf')

This should give you what you want.

Upvotes: 3

Colin T Bowers
Colin T Bowers

Reputation: 18530

I thought it might be worth pointing out that the behavior you are aiming for can be obtained using hgsave and hgload, BUT only if you are happy to save using .fig. The documentation for these functions fooled me for a while into believing they could work with other extensions (such as .pdf), but I couldn't get an example to work on my machine (Linux Mint v12, Matlab r2012b). Perhaps someone else might be able to do better. An example of it working with the .fig extension follows:

%# Create some example data
x = (0:10)';
y1 = (1/10) * x;
y2 = sin(x);

%# Create an array of figures and an array of axes
AllFig(1) = figure('Visible', 'off');
AllFig(2) = figure('Visible', 'off');
AllAxes(1) = axes('Parent', AllFig(1));
AllAxes(2) = axes('Parent', AllFig(2));

%# Plot the data on the appropriate axes
plot(AllAxes(1), y1);
plot(AllAxes(2), y2);

%# Save both figures to .fig in one hit using hgsave
hgsave(AllFig, 'TwoFigsOneFile.fig');

% Clear the workspace
clear

%# Load both figures in one hit using hgload
LoadFig = hgload('TwoFigsOneFile.fig');

%# Display the first figure and second figure
figure(LoadFig(1));
figure(LoadFig(2));

Upvotes: 3

drb
drb

Reputation: 56

I don't think so - you need to increment the file name in some manner. I would use something like:

for ii=1:3
    saveas(ii,[filename '-' num2str(ii)],'pdf)
end

As a side note, I have had repeated difficulties when including the pdfs generated by matlab in a manuscript submission. My current solution is to produce eps files and convert with a shell script.

r/

Upvotes: 4

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