Bounding Box

The bounding box of an image refers to the smallest upright rectangle which entirely encloses the figures on a page.

the printed image from file fig_a2.eps:
In a PostScript file, the bounding box is useful whenever a figure is to be included in some other document, such as a LaTeX document. All the essential information about the bounding box is given by 4 numbers in a single line of the PostScript file. These four numbers are referred to as llx, lly, urx, and ury; the x and y coordinates of the lower-left and upper-right coordinates of the bounding box. The coordinates are measured in the traditional typesetting units ``points'', where 1 inch = 72 points (1 cm = 28 points).
The image above/left shows how a certain image appears on an ordinary 8½"×11" page. The bounding box extends from 210 to 495 in the x-direction, and from 245 to 620 in the y-direction. Thus the lower-left corner has the coordinates (210,245), while the upper-right corner has the coordinates (495,620).

In a PostScript file (which is only a special kind of text file, so you can edit it if necessary), the bounding box information should appear in one of the very first lines of the file. If you need to insert it, the bounding-box line best appears as the second line of the file (don't mess with the top line!), and should be of the form

%%BoundingBox: llx lly urx ury

The bounding box line for the PostScript figure depicted above would be

%%BoundingBox: 210 245 495 620

For use with the epsfig package, you don't actually have to edit the numbers into the PostScript file; you can include them as options into the \epsfbox{} command. For example,

    \begin{center}
        \epsfxsize=85mm
        \epsfbox[210 245 495 620]{fig_a2.eps}
    \end{center}