A beginner-friendly tutorial to help you make great Matlab figures for your (LaTeX) scientific paper or your PhD thesis, also in Word. Generate professional high-quality plots and figures that work for Latex, PdfTex, Word and PowerPoint. I'll show you how to generate high-quality professional looking plots in figures that can follow the APA guidelines and be accepted in peer-reviewed scientific journals. I used this code for my PhD thesis and my scientific papers, and I wanted to present the information in dark mode, with a minimal but elegant style for your pleasure. I'll walk you through the code line by line including the matlab print function, the matlab set function, the matlab findall function, fontsize in matlab, latex interpreter in matlab and so much more. Our goal is for your to turn your plots and figures into professional graphics and images that can be used in peer-reviewed journals. I use dark mode for your convenience, and show an example in LaTeX. I discuss in particular the fontsize, as 17 or 21 or 32, to make my point clear. The colors come from Monokai Pro dark mode, my favourite color scheme for editing and for Matlab.
The Matlab code _________________________________
hfig = figure; % save the figure handle in a variable
t = 0:0.02:10; x = t.*sin(2*pi*t)+ 2*rand(1,length(t)); % data
plot(t,x,'k-','LineWidth',1.5,'DisplayName','$\Omega(t)$');
xlabel('time $t$ (s)')
ylabel('$\Omega$ (V)')
fname = 'myfigure';
picturewidth = 20; % set this parameter and keep it forever
hw_ratio = 0.65; % feel free to play with this ratio
set(findall(hfig,'-property','FontSize'),'FontSize',17) % adjust fontsize to your document
set(findall(hfig,'-property','Box'),'Box','off') % optional
set(findall(hfig,'-property','Interpreter'),'Interpreter','latex')
set(findall(hfig,'-property','TickLabelInterpreter'),'TickLabelInterpreter','latex')
set(hfig,'Units','centimeters','Position',[3 3 picturewidth hw_ratio*picturewidth])
pos = get(hfig,'Position');
set(hfig,'PaperPositionMode','Auto','PaperUnits','centimeters','PaperSize',[pos(3), pos(4)])
%print(hfig,fname,'-dpdf','-painters','-fillpage')
print(hfig,fname,'-dpng','-painters')
TIMESTAMPS _________________________________
0:00 create great MATLAB figures
0:14 typical matlab figure: issues
0:22 unclear matlab figure
0:28 matlab figure fontsize too small
0:33 matlab different fonts axis vs label
1:03 THE ENTIRE MATLAB CODE!
1:09 Generate matlab figure
1:30 save figure handle as hfig
1:40 create random data in matlab
1:45 plot data with pretty color, thick line, displayname
2:13 label in matlab figure
2:31 MOST INTERESTING PART OF THE CODE!
2:34 picturewidth = 20
2:58 height/weight ratio = 0.65
3:15 findall() and set() functions in matlab example
3:30 set all fontsize in matlab to 17
3:51 box property in matlab figure
4:20 latex interpreter in matlab figure
4:40 tick labels (Ticklabel) in latex in matlab figure
4:54 matlab figure size command
5:03 pdf figure size issue
5:30 print pdf function for matlab figure
5:42 save as png and save as pdf in matlab
6:00 the problem with EPS for LaTeX
6:26 print series of figures in matlab
6:50 HOW TO SET THE BEST FONTSIZE!
7:36 use and install Computer Modern Serif on Windows
8:23 the perfect fontsize
8:30 large fontsize in matlab for PowerPoint
9:09 would you like a tutorial on legends or color schemes?
