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when inserting an image into my *.tex-file, I get the error

Dimension too large

the command was (reduced to the important lines)

\begin{figure}[tbp]
\includegraphics{graphics/3-1-23}
\end{figure}

where graphics/3-1-23.pdf is the file I want to include. Also tried to

  • include the original tif or as eps (and left the extension of course), and
  • rename the file and avoid numbers at the beginning of the line.

nothing worked out. The processing way of the image was

  1. get tif from oscillosope
  2. crop it using linux commandline tool "convert"
  3. converted to either eps or pdf

The package graphicx is included, when including as pdf I'm using pdflatex, otherwise latex.

Do you know such a problem or do you have a solution? Thanks in advance :-)

P.S.: Cannot provide an image yet - currently not enough reputation ;-)

AnatraIlDuck
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    I wouldn't convert a TIFF file into PDF, but rather into PNG. – egreg May 13 '12 at 16:08
  • Welcome to TeX.SX! You can still add images with the button; before sending the question, remove the ! in front of the [...] and a user with enough rep will reinstate it. However I don't think that in this case this would help, as images are always converted. Can you put the PDF in a public place? – egreg May 13 '12 at 16:10
  • there you go: 3-1-23.pdf :-) – AnatraIlDuck May 13 '12 at 16:14
  • alright, I'm going to give .png a try. Identify tells me:

    Resolution: 1x1 Print size: 251x201 Units: Undefined How can I change these fields?

     – AnatraIlDuck May 13 '12 at 16:24
  • and my convert call was "convert 3-1-23.tif 3-1-23.pdf" without any further flags

    when trying .png, latex tells me that it couldn't determine the image size (when running "latex") but when running "pdflatex" everything works out fine...

     – AnatraIlDuck May 13 '12 at 16:25
  • Your PDF file is 18072 x 14472 pts, which is 6.3 x 5.1 meters. Quite large indeed, I'd say. You probably should add something like -density 300 or 600 for stating a suitable resolution. – egreg May 13 '12 at 16:28
  • Okay Jake and egreg, thanks a lot - this worked out (even for the "ugly" tif-to-eps way). As my reputation won't let me answer my own question yet, one of you may answer it and I chose it as answer, otherwise you may close the topic.

    Thanks a lot, you saved my sunday evening :-)

     – AnatraIlDuck May 13 '12 at 16:34

1 Answers1

5

One of the reasons why pdfTeX doesn't support TIFF image inclusion is that there are really many different TIFF formats. So a conversion is needed to a format that pdfTeX (or TeX) understands.

For TIFF generated by an oscilloscope the best format should probably be PNG; as your example shows there can be resolution problems and indeed your conversion ended with a file which is 18072bp high and 14472bp wide (72bp = 1in), which is approximately 6.3 meters high and 5.1 meters wide.

Add the resolution parameter to the conversion process:

convert -density 300 -units PixelsPerInch 3-1-23.tif 3-1-23.png

should be what's needed. A resolution of 600 dpi might also be good: it depends on the resolution of your printer which one to choose, but usually 300 is a good choice.

egreg
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