Copy figure losing transparancy

Hi, I have noticed that I seem to have lost the ability to use the "copy figure" to paste figures into powerpoint that have transparency (FaceAlpha<1) while retaining the transparency.

For example, if I use the following to produce overlaid,semi-transparent histograms of normal random variables:

rnd1=randn(1,1000);
rnd2=randn(1,1000);
hold on;
hist(rnd2)
hist(rnd1)
h = findobj(gca,'Type','patch');
set(h(1),'FaceColor','r','EdgeColor','k','FaceAlpha',.2);
set(h(2),'FaceColor','b','EdgeColor','k','FaceAlpha',.2);

I cannot then use the "Edit>Copy Figure" to paste into Powerpoint without losing the transparency. I could have sworn that I used to be able to do this.

Thanks in advance for any suggestions on how to retain the transparency when using the Copy Figure option.

Answer 1

[Sean de Wolski]

More than likely the renderer is switching away from OpenGL to painters which does not support transparency.

You can go into the Copy Options and select bitmap, this will should do it.

[Matt]

After selecting Bitmap, the figure loses any title and axis labels, actually everything except for the middle image is black.

Is there a way to ensure i'm not switching from OpenGL?

Thanks for the quick response!

[Sean de Wolski]

You could also try setting the figure's RendererMode to manual so that it doesn't try to switch.

set(gcf,'RendererMode','manual')

I can't reproduce this though so it's still a guess!

[Matt]

Thanks again for the response.

I checked to make sure I am using "OpenGL" which i am. I switched the renderermode to manual, and i'm still not able to retain the transparency when using the copy figure option.

If it helps, i can actually see the figure flash to being opaque when copying to the clipboard...