How to best include Matlab figure with transparency in a LaTeX document?

Usually, the recommended way to include figures in LaTeX is via eps as discussed in https://de.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/96084-how-do-i-include-a-matlab-figure-in-a-latex-document. This has the big advantage that eps stores the bounding boxes so that LaTeX will crop the figure automatically to remove whitespace.

But now I have a figure with alpha transparency and such transparency is not supported by eps. Of course I could export the figure into a PDF, but then I have to manually crop it before including it in LaTeX. So is there a better pipeline available?

Answer 1

[Subhadeep Koley]

In MATLAB R2019a you can save EPS with alpha transparency.

print('yourTransparentImage','-depsc');% place this code after the figure generation code 

Find the attached zip file having transparent EPS file generated using this code. Also see the attached PDF with transparent EPS generated by LaTeX.

Otherwise, you can find a custom function to exports figures to a number of vector & bitmap formats here.

[Johannes Pfeifer]

Thank you for your answer. But that is not native transparency, as far as I can see (https://stackoverflow.com/questions/29321707/can-transparency-be-used-with-postscript-eps). Importantly, the resulting graphic is not a vector graphic anymore. Zoom in and you will see that the axis tick labels are pixelated and grainy.

[Subhadeep Koley]

Hi,

You can set the renderer property of the print function to '-painters' If you want to ensure that your output format is a true vector graphics file. The below code might help.

print('yourTransparentImage','-depsc','-painters');

Adding this true vector EPS to your LaTeX document doesn't make the axis tick labels pixelated and grainy (see the attached PDF).

[Johannes Pfeifer]

Perfect. That was what I was looking for.

[Fred]

I am having problems with this solution. My plot with an alpha channel assigned is washed out in eps but okay in pdf, but I need the eps for the bounding box. See the attached zip file. The m-file is repeated below.

%%% Test alpha channel

clear vars, close all

x = (0:0.002:1)';

hold on

for ii = 1:100

plot(x,x+0.1*randn(length(x),1),'Color',[0 0 1 0.01])

end

exportgraphics(gca,'TestAlphaPlotEG.eps')

print('TestAlphaPlot.eps','-depsc')

print('TestAlphaPlot.pdf','-dpdf')

[Jonas]

did you find a solution? still cant export to eps using exportgraphics