scale the figures to fit the page width and height
Post date: Dec 9, 2011 6:13:51 PM
Rather than fixing the dimension of figures (e.g., [width=1in]), which might not be so flexible when changing the paper size, I found that scaling the figures with respect to the width or height of the paper is way more convenient. Only 3 things to remember:
- A page is normalized such that its width and height are at most 1, and it is a good practice to allow the figure portion to occupy at maximum only 0.9 of the whole width or length.
- The width scale can be determined using the command \linewidth. For example, if we want 2 figures to fit within 0.9 width portion of the page, we would assign the width 0.45 equally for each figure.
- The height scale can also be determined using the command \textheight in a similar manner to the \linewidth.
Example1
The first 2 figures are fit within the 0.9 page-width portion and followed below by 3 figures fit within the 0.9 page-width portion.
\begin{figure*}
\centering
\subfloat[Group1]{\includegraphics[width=0.45\linewidth]{./figures/fig1}}
\subfloat[Group2]{\includegraphics[width=0.45\linewidth]{./figures/fig2}} \\
\subfloat[Group3]{\includegraphics[width=0.3\linewidth]{./figures/fig3}}
\subfloat[Group4]{\includegraphics[width=0.3\linewidth]{./figures/fig4}}
\subfloat[Group5]{\includegraphics[width=0.3\linewidth]{./figures/fig5}}
\caption[Caption in the figure content.]{Caption in details.}
\label{fig:results}
\end{figure*}
Example2
The 3 figures fit within 0.7 of the page-height portion with the scale 0.2, 0.2 and 0.3 for figure1, 2 and 3, respectively. In this example, the remaining 0.2 (=0.9-(0.2+0.2+0.3)) of the page-height portion is preserved for the caption.
\begin{figure*}
\centering
\subfloat[Group1]{\includegraphics[height=0.2\textheight]{./figures/fig1}} \\
\subfloat[Group2]{\includegraphics[height=0.2\textheight]{./figures/fig2}} \\
\subfloat[Group3]{\includegraphics[height=0.3\textheight]{./figures/fig3}} \\
\caption[Caption in the figure content.]{Caption in details.}
\label{fig:results}
\end{figure*}