[OS X TeX] TexShop with Psfrag - Need Help

Wed Jun 18 21:27:19 EDT 2008

I export a cell from Mathematica ("Save Selection As", and choose the  
option EPS), open it in Illustrator, and edit it as much as I like. If  
I need other text or equations, I create them with LaTeXit, and export  
that to .EPS, open it in Illustrator, copy it, and paste it into the  
Mathematica file open in Illustrator.

There are all sorts of interesting things you can do with the file in  
Illustrator, e.g. change thickness or color of a function's graph,  
change the grid legends, you name it.

Then, all editing done, save the Illustrator file as EPS, and open it  
within TeXShop. Presto, a cropped PDF, which is easily incorporated  
into you LaTeX file with \includegraphics{filename}. (The graphics  
will be named filename.pdf, but don't use .pdf in the  
\includegraphics{filename} command.)

Illustrator is not cheap, but if you're an academic, there are various  
discounts Adobe offers. The "Creative Suite" sale allowed me to get  
nearly all of their products in a bundle for $150 about six months  
ago. I still can't believe it.

It's possible that much the same can be done with the Open Source and  
free Inkscape, but I haven't used it enough to say.

David Derbes
U of Chicago Laboratory Schools

On Jun 18, 2008, at 8:19 PM, Michael Sharpe wrote:

> Photoshop is probably out of the question, as it is raster-oriented,  
> and eps can mean just a wrapper around raster data. It seems that's  
> what Photoshop EPS is doing. You should be to use psfrag as it  
> stands with an Adobe Illustrator file exported to eps format, and  
> the same should be true for most programs which save in vector eps  
> format. However, your experience with Mathematica shows how easily  
> it is to make an eps file that is not understood by psfrag.
>
> By the way, there is a full description in the Mathpsfrag  
> documentation of what goes awry in the Mathematica-generated eps.
>
> I'm partial to PSTricks, which generates eps graphics and has no  
> need of tags or psfrag, because it is an extension of TeX. There is  
> learning curve though.
>
> Michael
>
> On Jun 18, 2008, at 5:06 PM, Catherine Taff wrote:
>
>> That looks great. I'm also looking for a way to add tags to figures  
>> not created in Mathematica. Is there a free program I can use to do  
>> that?
>>
>> On Jun 18, 2008, at 4:59 PM, Michael Sharpe wrote:
>>
>>> You might try Mathpsfrag, available from
>>>
>>> http://wwwth.mppmu.mpg.de/members/jgrosse/mathpsfrag/
>>>
>>> Michael
>>>
>>> On Jun 18, 2008, at 3:44 PM, Catherine Taff wrote:
>>>
>>>> I am new to LaTeX, using TexShop and trying to get psfrag to  
>>>> work, but am having no luck so far.
>>>>
>>>> Psfrag seems to work fine in using LaPrint with Matlab. What I  
>>>> want to do now is have it work with tags I put on images not  
>>>> created in Matlab, for example something I drew using Photoshop.  
>>>> I first tried using Photoshop 7 on my Mac to create the .eps and  
>>>> psfrag didn't work with it (no errors, just didn't work). I  
>>>> thought maybe Photoshop wasn't doing it right, since EPS wasn't  
>>>> an optional file format for saving, but "Photoshop EPS" was (are  
>>>> they different?).
>>>>
>>>> I tried using Mathematica 6, putting a tag on a graph created in  
>>>> Mathematica by using the draw capability and entering text, but  
>>>> that didn't work either. I'm not getting any error messages  
>>>> again, it's just not doing the replacement. I read through the  
>>>> documentation on psfrag and it said you can examine your ESP  
>>>> document as an ASCII and see how the tag is shown in there in  
>>>> order to make sure you're calling it right with psfrag. It said  
>>>> there would be
>>>>
>>>> (thetag) show
>>>>
>>>> somewhere in the ASCII version. I didn't find "show" anywhere in  
>>>> my Photoshop EPS and didn't find it in reference to the tag I  
>>>> added in my Mathematica-created EPS - though in the Mathematica  
>>>> one I found my tag referenced like this (the tag is "Rf"):
>>>>
>>>> %      "]]}}, InsetBox[Cell["Rf"], {4.649821375409347, \
>>>> %4271.379822432118}, {-1., 0.}]},
>>>>
>>>> It seems since it's not in there like:
>>>>
>>>> (thetag} show
>>>>
>>>> that it won't work with psfrag? Is that correct? Has anyone had  
>>>> success with Mathematica-added tags and psfrag? What program  
>>>> should I be using to add my tags in order to get psfrag to work?  
>>>> Are any of the problems I'm having related to the fact that I'm  
>>>> using TexShop? Sorry for all the questions, I'm still very new to  
>>>> all this.
>>>>
>>>> -Catherine
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> PS. I feel like TexShop is too good to be true - it seems to have  
>>>> all the functions in the one program when other ways of having  
>>>> LaTeX on a Mac involve many many programs. Are there limitations  
>>>> to TexShop that I'll run into in the future if I keep using it?  
>>>> Are there better ways of using LaTeX on a Mac?
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
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>>>
>>>
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>>
>>
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>
>
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