How can I avoid manual deletion of all helper files when I use psfrag?

Question

I have a problem in getting pstool to work with \psfragfig.

I have a folder structure that looks as follows:

main.tex
images/
      |
      |-testeps.eps

The MWE is shown below. All the packages are included for completeness as that reflects the custom, university provided class file I use. In that class file some other commands are included but those are mostly related to the customisation of the headers and titles and therefore omitted.

\documentclass[a4paper,11pt,twoside,onecolumn,openright]{book}

% Packages found in the class (.cls) file
\RequirePackage{fncychap}
\RequirePackage{ifthen}
\RequirePackage{ifpdf}
\RequirePackage{hyperref}
\RequirePackage{colortbl}
\RequirePackage{geometry}
\RequirePackage{fancyhdr}
\RequirePackage{graphicx}
\RequirePackage{eso-pic}
\RequirePackage{psfrag}
\RequirePackage{nomencl}
\RequirePackage{subfig}
\RequirePackage{caption}

% Packages added by me
\usepackage{pdfsync}                % enable tex source and pdf output syncronicity
\usepackage{natbib}                 % fancy citations
\usepackage{amsmath}                % enables no-number equations {equations*}
\usepackage{tikz}                   % needed to import .tikz graphics
\usepackage{pgfplots}               % needed to import .tikz graphics
\usetikzlibrary{plotmarks}          % needed for tikz scatter plot
\usepackage[section]{placeins}      % keeps figures from floating out of a 
\usepackage{pstool}                 % necessary for psfrag with pdflatex

\DeclareGraphicsExtensions{.pdf,.png,.jpg,.eps} %graphicsx package set-up

\begin{document}

Text.

\psfragfig*[width=0.8\linewidth]{images/testeps}
{
\psfrag{A}{$flatplate_2$}
\psfrag{B}{$Plate_2$}
\psfrag{C}{$\gamma$}
}

\end{document}

This MWE compiles fine the first time, but when I try it a second time the output looks like this:
The log file has the following error line in it:

! LaTeX Error: Cannot determine size of graphic in testeps.pdf (no BoundingBox)

I have to manually delete all the files except for the .eps file in the images folder before it works again.

Obviously I don't want to delete all the files manually each time before every re-run, so how can I solve this problem?

I use TeXShop 3.24 on Mac OSX.

Update 1:

It seems that pstool trips over the presence of the .pdf file after it has run the first time. After a first run the image folder contains the following files:

testeps-pstool.aux
testeps-pstool.out
testeps-pstool.pdfsync
testeps.eps
testeps.pdf

If I delete the .pdf file and rerun, all goes well.

Update 2:

It seems that the line

\DeclareGraphicsExtensions{.pdf,.png,.jpg,.eps} %graphicsx package set-up

was giving problems. Removing that line solves my problem.

Answer 1

• With pstool it loads graphicx and psfrag. Make a simple MWE by removing unnecessary packages to demonstrate the error.

• The \DeclareGraphicsExtensions{.pdf,.png,.jpg,.eps} need not be used since pdflatex knows which format to pick during a psfrag auxillary processing(latex->dvips->ps2pdf).

• On TeXLive distro .eps files are also included via epstopdf automatically(under hood) but in MiKTeX it needs to included explicitly in preamble.

• The following example uses EPS figure trial.eps at ctan and more examples at ctan

  % compiled by `pdflatex --shell-escape` enabled
  \documentclass{book}
  \listfiles % to show the list of packages loaded in .log file
  \usepackage[crop=pdfcrop,process=all,cleanup={.tex,.dvi,.ps,.pdf,.log}]{pstool} 
  % Good options for pstool package
  \EndPreamble % Will help to pick the right preamble in pstool auxillary process 
  \usepackage{color}
  \begin{document}
  \begin{figure}
  \centering
  \includegraphics[width=0.8\linewidth]{trial.eps}
  \caption{Tagged eps image}
  \end{figure}
  \begin{figure}
  \centering
  \psfragfig[width=0.8\linewidth]{trial}{\color{red}
    \psfrag{[Mp]}{$M_A$}%
    \psfrag{[hb]}{$H_B$}} 
  \caption{Replacing tags with real labels with psfrag}
  \end{figure}
  \end{document}