EPS files and pdflatex

There is this odd quirk in LaTeX. The latex executable compiles your .tex files in the old-fashioned DVI format. As such, it accepts by default only .eps (Encapsulated PostScript) images. pdflatex compiles your .tex files in the standard PDF format. For some mysterious quirk, pdflatex accepts raster formats like .png and .jpg , but does not accept .eps!

Sometimes you want the best of both worlds. An undergraduate of my lab, after some googling, found you can force pdflatex to insert .eps files happily:

1)Install texlive-extra packages, or any other package containing the epstopdf utility.

2) Insert the following code in your .tex file:

\newif\ifpdf
\ifx\pdfoutput\undefined
\pdffalse
\else
\pdfoutput=1
\pdftrue
\fi
\ifpdf
\usepackage{graphicx}
\usepackage{epstopdf}
\DeclareGraphicsRule{.eps}{pdf}{.pdf}{`epstopdf #1}
\pdfcompresslevel=9
\else
\usepackage{graphicx}
\fi

3) Compile using pdflatex with the -shell-escape command line option

It seems to work.