Landscape forces position of floats

Question

I have a couple of large figures, which I'd like to put on separate pages in landscape mode.

\usepackage{lscape}

...

\begin{landscape}
\begin{figure}[!t]
  \centering
  ...
\end{figure}
\end{landscape}

The problem is that when I wrap the figure in a landscape environment, it stops floating. Landscape creates a landscape page exactly in the place where it is expanded and figure is forced into it.

At the moment I'm dealing with this by moving these figures around manually but I wonder if there is any way of making latex handle them the same way as any other floating figures (i.e. ones without landscape environment).

Answer 1

For this purpose it seems better to use the sidewaysfigure environment from the rotating package.

\documentclass[11pt]{article}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage{rotating}

\begin{document}
  \begin{sidewaysfigure}
    \centering
    \rule{6.4in}{3.6in}
    \caption{Dummy figure}\label{fig:dummy}
  \end{sidewaysfigure}
\end{document}

It will always occupy a whole page and is mostly placed after the current page. The caption is also turned automatically. The package allows to control the direction in which the rotation will happen. For details please see the package manual.