Including figures relative to the path of the current document?

Question

I am writing a paper simultaneously with my thesis; the paper will be included verbatim in the thesis (or at least, parts of it will).

I am looking for a solution that allows me to update my paper without maintaining a separate version for inclusion in the thesis.

I currently use the standalone package with the import package to allow inclusion of independently-compilable documents. This works for almost everything, but not for figures: I include figures with \includegraphics, and it cannot find figures included in a subdirectory of the paper unless they're also in the same subdirectory of the thesis.

Is there a way around this, besides the obvious but, imo, ugly use of symbolic links?

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Following the suggested links, I noted that this question: How to make the main file recognize relative paths used in the imported files? recommends using subimport, in which case my question may become "when should I use subimport vs import vs input." But I'm not sure, so I'm still asking the original question, this is just "showing my work".

Answer 1

Latex actually supports to use relative paths. Both of the following two ways can achieve your goal (assume all your figures in figures folder):

1. Add \graphicspath {{figures/}} before \begin{document}

2. Use \includegraphics[width=\textwidth]{figures/your-figure.eps}