Thursday, December 04, 2008

Exporting Powerpoint Figures to Latex on Mac

I wanted to quickly write down how to export Powerpoint figures to use within pdflatex on Mac OS X, since a quick Googling didn't turn up a straightforward explanation:
  1. Ensure the figure is on its own slide.
  2. Print the slide to a PDF.
  3. Open the PDF in Skim.
  4. Do Tools -> Select Tool.
  5. Select the figure and adjust the borders of the selection appropriately.
  6. Do Tools -> Crop Page.
  7. Do File -> Export..., pick a file name, and choose "PDF with Embedded Notes" as the file format.
  8. Include the resulting file in the Latex document, e.g., using graphicx.