Crop entire document around figure

Question

Have you ever submitted a LaTeX paper to a journal that wants separate figures? When you want to include a figure composed of a table of images, you must build it separately.

When I run latexpdf, I get an entire 8.5 x 11 page, even when I remove the page number.

Is there a way to "autocrop" my built pdf as I compile it from LaTeX? I suppose I could open it in inkscape and crop and save it, but I'd really like to learn how to do this the right way.

score 13 · Accepted Answer · edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:35

13

I have been using the standalone package exactly for this purpose. You create a standalone tex file for each figure and use:

\documentclass[preview=true]{standalone}

and the main files which include this standalone file will need to have the complete preamble including \usepackage{standalone}. Martin Scharrer, the package author provides a good example here.

Alternatively you could use the preview package. Add \usepackage[active, graphics]{preview}, and use the \PreviewEnvironment to specify which environments you want to be extracted.

Here is an example that extracts the two tikzpicture environments on separate pages:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{tikz}
\usepackage{lipsum}

\usepackage[active,tightpage]{preview}
\PreviewEnvironment{tikzpicture}
\setlength\PreviewBorder{1pt}%

\begin{document}
\lipsum[1]
\begin{tikzpicture}
    \draw [red, ultra thick] (0,0) rectangle (1,1);
\end{tikzpicture}
\lipsum[2]
\begin{tikzpicture}
    \draw [blue,fill=yellow] (0,0) circle (5pt);
\end{tikzpicture}
\end{document}

edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:35

Community

1

answered Oct 24 '11 at 18:03

Peter Grill

223,288

+1 This sounds exactly like what I want. But I don't seem to have the package, despite having installed texlive-full. Do you know how to get the package (I'm using Ubuntu)? – user Oct 24 '11 at 18:12
Which package? Both preview and standalone are part of the normal distribution. I have added links to the answer as to where the packages are. – Peter Grill Oct 24 '11 at 18:16
Both are availble from CTAN: standalone and preview and should form part of TeX Live. Install these using tlmgr. – Werner Oct 24 '11 at 18:17
1

@Werner: The TeXLive version of Ubuntu is from 2009 and doesn't include tlmgr. – Martin Scharrer Oct 24 '11 at 18:21
@MartinScharrer: That's old-school... I guess it's a manual installation then. – Werner Oct 24 '11 at 18:23
2

@Oliver: If you still have the (utterly outdated) TeXLive version which ships with Ubuntu then consider installing it manually: How to install “vanilla” TeXLive on Debian or Ubuntu?. Otherwise try a sudo tlmgr install preview standalone on the command line. – Martin Scharrer Oct 24 '11 at 18:25
You can also install it manually: How to install LaTeX .zip package (from CTAN) using texhash on a 'nix system? . The TDS ZIP file for standalone is at http://mirror.ctan.org/install/macros/latex/contrib/standalone.tds.zip. – Martin Scharrer Oct 24 '11 at 18:27
I've installed LaTeX using all of these packages and have had success recognizing the standalone document type. The height of my pdf now matches the height of the figure; however, the width is still quite large. Do you know if there is some different setting for the width? – user Oct 24 '11 at 20:22
I think for your case you should use the preview environment directly. But if you have moved your figures to a separate file, you should post a new question regarding your specific problem with a compilable MWE that illustrates the problem including the \documentclass so that those trying to help don't have to recreate it. – Peter Grill Oct 24 '11 at 20:38
1

@Oliver: Make sure you don't have empty lines at the begin or end of the document environment. They cause paragraphs. See Avoid paragraph due to trailing empty line in standalone file. – Martin Scharrer Oct 24 '11 at 23:04

score 4 · Answer 2 · answered Oct 24 '11 at 18:20

I agree with Peter Grill. You should use standalone for your pictures and other more complicated figures in the future. However, for an existing document using preview directly is easier. However, for complicated figures which are not simply contain a single *picture environment or \includegraphics I would redefine the figure environment instead to use preview directly while removing the \caption:

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage[demo]{graphicx}% remove 'demo' for real documents
\usepackage[active,tightpage]{preview}
\setlength{\PreviewBorder}{0pt}

\renewenvironment{figure}[1][]{%
    \begin{preview}%
        \renewcommand{\caption}[2][]{}%
}{%
    \end{preview}%
}

\begin{document}

text text text text text text 

\begin{figure}[t]
    \centering
    \includegraphics[width=\textwidth]{image}%
    \caption{Some caption}
\end{figure}

text text text text text text 

\begin{figure}[b]
    \centering
    \includegraphics[width=\textwidth]{image}%
    \caption[short]{Some caption}
\end{figure}

text text text text text text 

\end{document}

This will give you one PDF which has every figure as one tight page. You then might separate it using a PDF tool like pdftk with the burst argument.

Crop entire document around figure

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