caption ruining figure placement in minipage

Question

I have tiny problem. I'm using minipage to put two pictures side by side in a two column article. The code is

\begin{figure*}
\centering
\begin{minipage}[b]{.49\textwidth}
\includegraphics[clip,scale=0.32]{Graph1}
\caption{Ovisnost savijenosti šipke $\lambda$ o primjenjenoj sili $F$.}
\label{fig:graph1}
\end{minipage}\hfill
\begin{minipage}[b]{.49\textwidth}
\includegraphics[clip,scale=0.32]{Graph2}
\caption{Logaritamski graf ovisnosti savijenosti $\lambda$ o primjenjenoj sili $F$.}
\label{fig:graph2}
\end{minipage}
\end{figure*}

And the output is

I have set the captions to small

\usepackage[font={small}]{caption}

The problem is that the captions are aligned, and not the pictures! And ofc I need the pictures to be aligned... So how can I correct this problem? I was thinking of adding a blank character or sth like that, in the first caption so that they would align, but I have no luck with that...

Any help is appreciated...

Answer 1

This is a classic case of "Hey LaTeX is doing exactly what I told it to!" The minipage option [b] says "Align my minipages to the bottom." So if the images are the same size and the captions are different sizes, the pictures will seem misaligned. What you want in this case is for the minipages to be aligned to the top. Replace both [b]s by [t]s and all should be well.

Answer 2

I think the best (more general) option is to place the captions in a separte set of minipages. Then you can have different size figure and wrapping captions

\begin{figure*}
    \centering
    \begin{minipage}[b]{.45\linewidth}
        \centering
        \fbox{\rule{.9\linewidth}{0pt}\rule{0pt}{3cm}}
    \end{minipage}%
    \hfill%
    \begin{minipage}[b]{.45\linewidth}
    \centering
        \centering
        \fbox{\rule{.9\linewidth}{0pt}\rule{0pt}{2cm}}
    \end{minipage}\\[-7pt]
    \begin{minipage}[t]{.45\linewidth}
        \caption{Box with a very very long caption}
    \end{minipage}%
    \hfill%
    \begin{minipage}[t]{.45\linewidth}
        \caption{Short caption}
    \end{minipage}%
\end{figure*}