Making TeX Work

Chapter 6. Pictures and Figures

Pictures and figures are an important component of many documents. This chapter explores how they can be incorporated into your TeX documents. There are many ways to include pictures and figures in TeX. The most important considerations are the type of image, the type of printer you will be using, what platform you are using, and how portable the document must be.

Different Kinds of Images

Images come from many, many different sources, but they can be divided into two broad classes: bitmapped and scalable (or vector). Bitmapped images are produced whenever an image is scanned from a drawing, photograph, or other printed work. They are also produced by most simple paint programs. Scalable images are produced by some more sophisticated drawing programs, many commercial sources, and some other applications. Both classes have advantages and disadvantages.

Files that contain graphic images usually end with an extension that identifies the format of the image. The extension is a common and convenient nickname for the image format. In this chapter, I refer to graphic image formats by their extension (for example, GIF images or XBM images) without explanation. I do this partly because it is easy, but also because it is the most common way of referring to them, and you don't really need to know anything about the image formats to use them. If your DVI driver understands PCX images, you just need a PCX image; you don't have to have a detailed understanding ...