# Environment subfigure - what to do with whitespace

So I've made a block of figures using the subcaption package. It contains 5 images and follows the following layout:

\begin{figure}[t]
\begin{subfigure}[t]{0.3\textwidth}
\includegraphics[width=\textwidth]
{1.pdf}
\caption{$1$}
\label{fig:1}
\end{subfigure}
~
\begin{subfigure}[t]{0.3\textwidth}
\includegraphics[width=\textwidth]
{2.pdf}
\caption{$2$}
\label{fig:2}
\end{subfigure}
~
\begin{subfigure}[t]{0.3\textwidth}
\includegraphics[width=\textwidth]
{3.pdf}
\caption{$3$}
\label{fig:3}
\end{subfigure}
~
\begin{subfigure}[t]{0.3\textwidth}
\includegraphics[width=\textwidth]
{4.pdf}
\caption{$4$}
\label{fig:4}
\end{subfigure}
~
\begin{subfigure}[t]{0.3\textwidth}
\includegraphics[width=\textwidth]
{5.pdf}
\caption{$5$}
\label{fig:5}
\end{subfigure}
~

\caption{Plots of numbers.}
\label{fig:numbers}

\end{figure}


My question is: what should I do with the whitespace? I thought of either putting the figure caption there, or centering the last two images so the whitespace is symmetrical. However I don't how to do any of the two. For the latter, I tried inserting an extra ~ before the fourth image but it didn't work-nothing happened.

-
welcome to tex.sx but please always try to post complete documents so they can be run locally (otherwise we can not see the spaces you are talking about) or upload a screenshot of your result (use the upload button but remove the ! as you do not have enough rep yet, but someone will put the ! back so including the image. Probably you want to use \hfill rather than  ~  so the 3 figures on each line are flush left centre and flush right. If you do that and set \parfillskip to zero the last two would spread out. –  David Carlisle Feb 20 '13 at 20:41

Please always post complete documents (I had to ask in chat which package you were using as my guess of subfigure proved wrong).

The image shows two layouts: the second one from the code as posted to get the first just simply use \hfill in all cases not the blank line and \hfil construct.

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage{subcaption}

\usepackage[demo]{graphicx}

\begin{document}

\begin{figure}[t]
\centering
\begin{subfigure}[t]{0.3\textwidth}
\includegraphics[width=\textwidth]
{1.pdf}
\caption{$1$}
\label{fig:1}
\end{subfigure}%
\hfill
\begin{subfigure}[t]{0.3\textwidth}
\includegraphics[width=\textwidth]
{2.pdf}
\caption{$2$}
\label{fig:2}
\end{subfigure}%
\hfill
\begin{subfigure}[t]{0.3\textwidth}
\includegraphics[width=\textwidth]
{3.pdf}
\caption{$3$}
\label{fig:3}
\end{subfigure}%

\mbox{}\hfil%
\begin{subfigure}[t]{0.3\textwidth}
\includegraphics[width=\textwidth]
{4.pdf}
\caption{$4$}
\label{fig:4}
\end{subfigure}%
\hfil
\begin{subfigure}[t]{0.3\textwidth}
\includegraphics[width=\textwidth]
{5.pdf}
\caption{$5$}
\label{fig:5}
\end{subfigure}

\caption{Plots of numbers.}
\label{fig:numbers}

\end{figure}

\end{document}

-
Thanks very much, I'll be sure to post complete docs in the future. –  Bracket Feb 21 '13 at 20:39