[Tex/LaTex] about graphic format to put in a latex file

graphics

I am a newbie in Latex and I am using TexEditor for using LaTeX and then converting my document into PDF. The issue that I have is that I want to include some math plots in my document.

Now, the program that I am using for capturing the plots can only store the graphic in: jpeg, bmp or gif. I have read that for not having lose of quality in my final document I should store it in eps format, is that right?

So in which format should I store the initial graph, in jpeg, bmp or gif? after that, what can I do? convert it by some online tool like http://image.online-convert.com/convert-to-eps or using Adobe Photoshop?

Things to consider

I am using Windows 7
The graph is obtained by a math program, that program does not allow the conversion to pdf directly, and only can save it in the three formats I mentioned before

Best Answer

Remarks

Apparently you are wanting to include a raster image format into your document. Of course, vector formats are preferred for such tasks, as including plots.

Using raster graphics formats

Nevertheless, you can find a comparison of various image compression formats here: http://www.aivosto.com/vbtips/imageformats.html

Personally I don't think, that bmp is a good choice, as it doesn't offer any compression, any your files tend to get huge.

jpeg offers a higher color range, than gif, while gif supports transparency.

Prospects

If you have any possibility to save your raster graphics as png, do so, because this format is more recent and isn't protected by any patents.

I don't know, what kind of plotting program you are using, but try to find an option, that allows export to a vector format, such as pdf, ps or eps. Your images will be much smaller and invariant under scaling.

Related Solutions

[Tex/LaTex] Problem with a very heavy EPS image – scatter plot too heavy as EPS

As noted in the comments on the question, EPS is not an ideal way to store the plot. For scatter plots with many points and also for pseudo colour plots, it's a better idea to store the plot itself (without axes and annotations) as a raster graphic such as a PNG. In the case of a pseudo colour plot, this is actually minimal and no information is lost. See this answer for an example I did of one.

As a sample, I plotted random points in octave and then turned off the axes. After saving as a PNG file, I used imagemagick to trim the margins from the plot to produce scatter.png:

enter image description here

Using pgfplots I wrapped this PNG in axes, thus minimising the the space and processing required by the points in the plot. This requires the use of pdflatex rather than latex with a PNG file.

enter image description here

\documentclass[10pt]{article}
\usepackage{pgfplots}
\pgfplotsset{width=6cm,compat=newest}

\begin{document}

\begin{figure}[ht]
\centering
\begin{tikzpicture}
    \begin{axis} [
        scale only axis,        % Plot size does not include axes.
        enlargelimits=false,    % Shrink wrap the PNG.
        axis on top,            % Axes placed over PNG to avoid obscuring the lines.
        xlabel=$x$,
        ylabel=$y$,
    ]
        \addplot graphics [
            xmin=0,
            xmax=1,
            ymin=0,
            ymax=1,
        ] {scatter.png};
    \end{axis}
\end{tikzpicture}
\caption{A simple example.}
\end{figure}

\end{document}

[Tex/LaTex] Why is LyX trying to convert every image into eps

I had the same problem and my solution was: in "Tools -> Preferences -> Converters" consider the "LaTeX (pdflatex) -> PDF (pdflatex)" converter and set

latex=pdflatex

in "Extra flag". If this will not work, delete the converters section in your ./lyx/preferences file (in Linux) and restart LyX.