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edited May 23, 2017 at 12:35

##Exporting graphics with consistent font sizes

I'll show you my preferred way of exporting figures for use with $\LaTeX$.

I prefer to use consistent font sizes in figures. This means that I need to export PDF figures at the final print size and avoid scaling them within LaTeX. (Note that PDF files contain information about the physical print size of the document.)

Let's say we want a 10 cm wide figure that uses 10 point type. Taking an example figure from the documentation,

g = ContourPlot3D[ x^4 + y^4 + z^4 - (x^2 + y^2 + z^2)^2 + 3 (x^2 + y^2 + z^2) == 3, {x, -2, 2}, {y, -2, 2}, {z, -2, 2}, Mesh -> None, ContourStyle -> Directive[Orange, Opacity[0.8], Specularity[White, 30]], PlotPoints -> 30, MaxRecursion -> 5, BaseStyle -> {FontSize -> 10}] (* <-- specify text size in points here *)

Mathematica graphics

I increased the PlotPoints and MaxRecursion options, otherwise the raggedness of the surface will be noticeable at the high resolutions we will be using here.

I prefer to work in centimetres (and not printer's point, the default unit of Mathematica):

cm = 72/2.54;

Let's turn on the ruler (Window -> Show Ruler) and verify that the following is really 10 cm wide (you may also need to go to Edit -> Preferences and set the ruler units to centimetres):

Show[g, ImageSize -> 10 cm]

Mathematica graphics

As you noticed, exporting 3D objects as vector graphics is not ideal, so let's rasterize this figure at the correct size:

image = Rasterize[Show[g, ImageSize -> 10 cm], "Image", ImageResolution -> 600];

(Unfortunately Mathematica has trouble with scaling tick marks when rasterizing, so you may want to use an explicit tick specification if this is important.)

A resolution of 600 dpi ensures that it will look excellent in print, but rasterization may take a while.

Finally, export the figure to a PDF of the correct size:

Export["figure.pdf", Show[image, ImageSize -> 10 cm]]

(When using PDF, it is necessary to specify ImageSize within Show and not Export to avoid some problems.)

You can open the produced PDF, maybe even print it out, and you'll see that all the text is precisely at 10 point size.

The same principles can be applied to 2D graphics that export well as vector data:

g = Plot[Sin[x], {x, 0, 10}, BaseStyle -> {FontSize -> 10}] Export["figure.pdf", Show[g, ImageSize -> 10 cm]]