Quality for images in LaTeX documents

Question

Hey all,

What are some of the pointers that I need to follow if I want to have good quality images in a LaTeX document. These images are mostly screenshots of an software application or flow charts.

Below are two such images.

Flow Chart

Screenshot

Thanx Ladislav

Answer 1

For diagrams, the rule is to use vector formats as much as you can - PDF, EPS or native LaTeX packages. When using vector graphics, the picture does not loose resolution and can be scaled freely. For this flow chart I would either export it from the drawing application as a PDF, or use PGF/Tikz to produce it from LaTeX (see also examples). If your drawing application does not have a PDF export, consider using one that does - e.g., UMLet

If you can't use vector graphics (e.g., because it is a screenshot), make sure you use high-enough resolution to begin with. If it is an academic paper, the publisher usually have guidelines for this.

Answer 2

For screenshots, there is not much to do, but for flow charts, I'd suggest to create them in PDF format (vectorized) and to compile your LaTeX source with pdflatex.

Answer 3

If you use PDFLatex you can use png images and in those cases you definately should use png over jpeg. PNG compression is not lossy, so you get the best quality at the expense of file size.

The second important point is to create the images with sufficient resolution, for printing it should be about 300-600 dpi, higher is better but the filesize of the images and the resulting document will increase. For documents that will only be looked at a screen you can use a lower resolution, about 72-100 dpi should be enough.

For diagrams you should create vector graphics (eps or pdf) if possible, that way you do not lose any quality.

Answer 4

Screenshots are pretty much a lost cause. I've had a good experience saving them as PDF and then embedding them, but you want to make sure you're on a high-res capture to begin with.

Charts are very easy. Most graphics programs (e.g., Vizio, OmniGraffle) will let you save it as EPS or PDF, and scaling works fairly well.

Answer 5

for the flowchart i'd suggest TikZ, then your chart is directly typeset in TeX. Here's an example: http://www.texample.net/tikz/examples/simple-flow-chart/