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I have a large figure that takes up a full page in my dissertation, leaving not enough room on that page for its caption. The figure must be a fixed size, I can't scale it down.

  1. The caption must appear on the page preceding the figure.
  2. The caption and figure must appear within the section, not at the end. Ideally, I'd like the caption and figure to appear as close to their insertion point as possible, or before the next subsection.
  3. The caption and figure must remain in their original order amongst the other figures in the section.
  4. I'm not concerned about odd/even pages (at the moment).

I found a relevant post that suggested using the fltpage package: How to put large figure caption on separate page from the figure

I tried that and it works in some cases, but not all. It does not meet my requirement #2. When I use the fltpage package, the figure is sometimes (not always) moved to the end of the section, and all the later figures are also moved (the order of figures is preserved).

I would greatly appreciate any advice! Thank you.

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  • Welcome to TeX.SX! Please help us to help you and add a minimal working example (MWE) that illustrates your problem. It will be much easier for us to reproduce your situation and find out what the issue is when we see compilable code, starting with \documentclass{...} and ending with \end{document}. You might also want to add to your question how you're including the pdfs etc.
    – Aradnix
    Oct 9, 2014 at 5:21
  • Jeez, I'm not sure how to make MINIMAL working example - the problematic behavior seems to depend on how the floats are arranged, where the text breaks are, etc. in other words it's layout-dependent.
    – Bee
    Oct 9, 2014 at 6:00
  • minimal means that you need to replicate your problem using the minimal quantity of packages related with your problem in your preamble. If you have something else that don't you need for compile right, the isn't minimal working.
    – Aradnix
    Oct 9, 2014 at 6:07

2 Answers 2

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I'd just put the caption in a [b] figure and the image in a [p] the caption figure will float until there is room for the caption at the bottom if the page, and at the following page break the pending p float will necessarily be output. (I'd never use afterpage: I know who wrote it:-)

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{lipsum,graphicx}
\begin{document}
\lipsum[1-11]


\begin{figure}[b]
  \caption[Some rather long caption]{\lipsum*[2]}
\end{figure}
\begin{figure}[p]
    \includegraphics[width=\textwidth,height=.999\textheight]{example-image}% La
\end{figure}
\lipsum[12-20]
\end{document}
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  • Wouldn't this result in two entries in the "list of figures"?
    – Bee
    Oct 16, 2014 at 8:22
  • @Ben no, why do you say that? Oct 16, 2014 at 8:24
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You could include the image as part of an \afterpage consideration:

enter image description here

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{lipsum,afterpage,graphicx}
\begin{document}
\lipsum[1-11]

\begin{figure}[t]
  \afterpage{%
    \noindent
    \includegraphics[width=\textwidth,height=.999\textheight]{example-image}% Large image
    \clearpage
  }
  \caption[Some rather long caption]{\lipsum*[2]}
\end{figure}

\lipsum[12-20]
\end{document}

In the above example, the image is placed inside an \afterpage, implying it will be set after the current page is set. As such, depending on the placement of the caption (highlighted), the image will follow on the subsequent page.

Note though that the document contents was carefully chosen so as to make it work. Yes, since the shipout routine is asynchronous, the figure/caption may be completed on page X, but only shipped out on page X+1. As such, the image actually lands on page X+1 also. In such cases, using \afterpage{\afterpage{...}} solves the problem.

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  • Thank you very much for your quick help! When I try this, I get the caption at the top of a page, and then the image inserted immediately afterwards, on the same page, and flowing out past the bottom of the page. I realize now that my initial problem statement was perhaps misleading: the image itself is not exactly the size of the page, it is simply a large image. So large that, together with a large caption, both image and caption will not together fit on a single page.
    – Bee
    Oct 9, 2014 at 6:08
  • Update: By trial and error, moving the entire figure env around in the document, sometimes with the \afterpage\afterpage, sometimes with just \afterpage, I was able to find a placement that works right now. This is a great improvement over what I had thank you very much! I'm still a bit concerned this could break depending on edits to the surrounding text - but I did wait to adjust the layout until the text was all (or mostly) complete, I hope this will not be an issue. I will try to tweak the appearance to match the output of the fltpage package elsewhere in my document.
    – Bee
    Oct 9, 2014 at 6:20

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