MATLAB figures
This page describes the best practices for making figures in MATLAB for inclusion in a LATEX document
Vector graphics
Most of the time you will want to choose vector graphics, that is, use MATLAB's "painters" renderer. Code to select this is:
set(gcf,'renderer','painters');
Set the figure size
Now you need to decide what the side of the figure should be. For a standard LaTeX report, we might want the plot to span the width of the page (ex: 6 inches wide) and half as tall (3 inches). to set 6x3 inch we use
set(gcf, 'PaperUnits', 'inches', 'PaperSize', [6 3]);