How to save a MATLAB graphic in a right size .pdf?

I save a graphic as .pdf format, but matlab will produce an A4 size to put this small picture in the middle of this A4 size pdf. The problem comes when I import them into my LaTeX file, i only need the picture size, not the whole A4 pdf size. Could anyone tell how to solve this problem?

[Bruce Rodenborn]

I absolutely cannot understand why thid BUG in MATLAB has not been fixed. I started using MATLAB in the aughts and have always had to save as an EPS and then convert to PDF. It is ridiculous for Mathworks to pretend like this is not a problem. Why would anyone want a PDF that is not formatted to be the same as the figure by default?

[DGM]

It makes sense to me that print()'s default behavior is to cater to output on paper.

Of course we're free to expect a different size, but what is the size of a figure in inches/centimeters/points? It's a function of whatever the presumed physical display resolution is, which varies with OS and version -- independently of what the apparent rendered size is. It's a baked-in ambiguity that means the size we get doesn't correspond to what we see on screen or what we expect to see when we embed it in another document.

% windows: 96
% mac: 72
% linux: varies (observed: R2009b-90; R2019b-96)
res = get(0,'ScreenPixelsPerInch') % R2024b

res = 100

Like a lot of things, the expectations of figure capture are not universal. As a consequence, it's frequently tedious to do all the setup the way you want it. If you want it to always behave in a particular non-default way, just write a helper function or two to make life easier.

I don't know what the behavior of exportgraphics() is. I don't run a new enough version to know if that's of any convenience.

Answer 1

[Friedrich]

Hi,

you can do it in MATLAB through:

h = figure;
plot(1:10);

set(h,'Units','Inches');

pos = get(h,'Position');

set(h,'PaperPositionMode','Auto','PaperUnits','Inches','PaperSize',[pos(3), pos(4)])

print(h,'filename','-dpdf','-r0')

[Vanita Pawar]

thnx i got the help for same.

[Reed Teyber]

Thank you very much, this just saved me the step of editing all figures in Inkscape

[madhan ravi]

accepted answer by Madhan Ravi since the OP didn't

[Jaime García González]

It does not work anymore, I am afraid.

[Lockenlui]

Works like charm!

[George Wimmer]

Thank you, works great! (Also, without setting h = figure, at least in my case, you can just replace 'h' with 'gcf')

[Priya Mittal]

Exactly what I wanted, many thanks!

[MAzharul Islam]

how to get it done while exporting simulink model using print. I write the following line in my command window which gives me a full page pdf instead of croped one. But in case of other formats it produces just the figure without any white space around the figure.

print('-shomedata','-dpdf','home.pdf')

Answer 2

[Fereidani Samani]

h4=figure;
set(h4,'PaperSize',[20 10]); %set the paper size to what you want  
print(h4,'filename','-dpdf') % then print it

[Kh. Islam]

Thank you.

Answer 3

[Oliver Woodford]

Export_fig saves the figure at the dimensions it appears at on screen, and crops the whitespace around the figure, for a tight border.

Note that for exporting to pdf it requires that you have ghostscript installed.

[SteveC]

Using print or export_fig as above crop the figure, but change the fonts used in the figure. Printing to Adobe pdf can preserve the fonts by embedding them and crops the picture to the minimum size if Friedrich's setting are mode. (System: Adobe Acrobat Pro 2017, Matlab 2012b, Win 7 x64). This is much better for my application. Is there a way to have ghostscript embed the fonts in the pdf?