Custom margin settings for figure in LaTeX

Question

I have a fairly large figure in a LaTeX document. This figure is too large for the left and right margin of the document. This results in the figure being placed flush with the left margin, and way beyond the right margin. What I want is to do, is center the figure on the page. Can I do this, e.g. by setting a different left margin for this figure?

Answer 1

If the figure is e.g. 3 inches too wide, add a negative space of half that before the figure:

\hspace*{-1.5in}
\includegraphics{...}

Answer 2

\centerline{\includegraphics{...}}

Does this without any hspace trickery.

Answer 3

If the figure is an external graphics, then do like this:

\begin{figure}
  \begin{center}
   \includegraphics[width=\textwidth]{...}
  \end{center}
\end{figure}

\textwidth will stretch it to full text width. You can specify a coefficient like, for example, 0.75 of the text width:

\includegraphics[width=0.75\textwidth]{...}

Answer 4

The above did not work for me as I wanted the figure wider than the caption. Also, I think there is a override by the endfloat package.

This will leave the entire document intact and only alter the figure:

\begin{figure}
    \advance\leftskip-4cm
    \includegraphics[options]{location}
\end{figure}

You could also use:

\advance\rightskip-2cm

Answer 5

Found a great simple solution to this problem!

\documentclass[a4paper,10pt]{article}
\usepackage{graphicx}
\begin{document}
\begin{figure}
\noindent\makebox[\textwidth]{%
\includegraphics[width=1.4\textwidth]{mypic}}
\end{figure}
\end{document}

I found this solution here: http://texblog.net/latex-archive/layout/centering-figure-table/#comment-875

Answer 6

If you are using the memoir class, the solution is to use

\centerfloat

rather than

\centering

in your float. This will prevent you from having to manually set the negative horizontal spacing.

Maybe you're not using memoir. Fair enough. \centerfloat is defined thusly, so you can just make your own:

\newcommand*{\centerfloat}{%
  \parindent \z@
  \leftskip \z@ \@plus 1fil \@minus \textwidth
  \rightskip\leftskip
  \parfillskip \z@skip}

Answer 7

The automated version of Ian's answer might look like this:

\newlength{\myimageoversize}
\newsavebox{\myimage}
\newcommand{\mycenter}[1]{%
\savebox{\myimage}{#1}
\settowidth{\myimageoversize}{\usebox{\myimage}}
\addtolength{\myimageoversize}{-\textwidth}
\setlength{\leftskip}{-0.5\myimageoversize}
\noindent
\usebox{\myimage}}

\begin{figure}
\mycenter{\includegraphics{...}}
\end{figure}