# Latex/MikTex Put multiple figures in twocolumn article document

I'm using latex to put the 1st figure in the top center of the page that span the twocolumns, just after this figure i want to add 2 other figures with some few paragrpahs and equations to the same page in twocoulmn env:

\documentclass[10pt,a4paper,twoside,twocolumn]{article}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage[left=0.53in,right=0.83in,top=0.3in,bottom=1.7in]{geometry}
%\usepackage[hmarginratio=1:1]{geometry}
\usepackage{fancyhdr}
%\usepackage{multicol}
\usepackage{times}
\usepackage{lettrine}
\usepackage{graphicx}
\usepackage{amsmath}
\usepackage{amssymb}
\usepackage{amsthm}
\usepackage{etoolbox}% http://ctan.org/pkg/etoolbox
\usepackage{sectsty}
%\usepackage{float}
%\usepackage[hang]{footmisc}
%
\pagestyle{fancy}
\renewcommand\thesection{\Roman{section}.}
%\renewcommand\thesubsection{\thesection.\arabic{subsection}}
\setlength{\columnsep}{0.43cm}
\setlength{\parindent}{0.16in}
%\setlength\footnotemargin{10pt} %
%\footnotesep is the space between footnotes:
%\setlength{\footnotesep}{0.5cm}
%\footins is the space between the text body and the footnotes:
\setlength{\skip\footins}{0.70cm}
\renewcommand*\footnoterule{}
%\pdfpagewidth 8.5in
%\pdfpageheight 11in
%\footerheight 55pt
%\lhead{\scriptsize{IEEE SIGNAL PROCESSING LETTERS, VOL. 11, NO. 7, JULY 2004}}
\fancyhead[LO,RE]{\scriptsize{IEEE SIGNAL PROCESSING LETTERS, VOL. 11, NO. 7, JULY 2004}}
\cfoot{}
%\rfoot{Right bottom}
%\cfoot{\thepage}
%\lfoot{Left bottom}
%Control the footnote indent
%\makeatletter
%\renewcommand\@makefntext[1]{%
% \noindent\makebox[0.1em][r]{\@makefnmark}#1}
%\makeatother
%
%{\normalfont\fontfamily{phv}\fontsize{16}{19}\bfseries}{\thesection}{1em}{}
%\titleformat{\section}
% {\normalfont\fontfamily{ptmr}\fontsize{16}{19}}{\thesection}{1em}{}
%\titleformat{\subsection}
% {\normalfont\fontfamily{ptmr}\fontsize{14}{17}}{\thesubsection}{1em}{}
%\titleformat{\subsubsection}
% {\normalfont\fontfamily{ptmr}\fontsize{14}{17}}{\thesubsubsection}{1em}{}
%
\makeatletter
\patchcmd{\section}{\bfseries}{\relax}{}{}% Non-bold \section
\patchcmd{\subsection}{\bfseries}{\relax}{}{}% Non-bold \subsection
\makeatother
%
\allsectionsfont{\centering}
\begin{document}
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
\begin{figure*}
\centering
\includegraphics[width=3.0in]{Image1}
\caption{\scriptsize{Fig. 1. (a) Intensity profile extracted from a real image. (b) The estimated 1st derivative information. (c) The estimated contrast information with$\sigma = 2:0.$}}
\label{Fig1}
\end{figure*}
%
\begin{figure}
\begin{centering}
\includegraphics[width=0.75\columnwidth]{Image3}
\caption{\scriptsize{Fig. 2. Definition of contrast.}}
\label{Fig2}
\end{centering}
\end{figure}
By convoluting a profile  $I(x)$ with this operator, we have
$$\label{eq:3} \varphi (x)=I(x)\otimes B(x)= I(x) - I(x)\otimes N(x;0,\sigma).$$
Basically,$\varphi (x)$ can be imagined as the 2nd derivative of the profile I(x).    Moreover, the local extremes of $\varphi (x)$ correspond to the high-curvature points of $I(x)$. Fig. 1(c) shows the contrast information extracted from Fig. 1(a) using (3) with$\sigma = 2.0$ , which is determined empirically. It is obvious that Fig. 1(c) offers much more reliable information than Fig. 1(b).\\
Since the 2nd derivative is orientation-dependent, the contrast information at an image pixel has to be measured along various orientations. In the proposed algorithm, we detect boundaries by checking the relations between each pixel and its eight neighbors. Hence, four directional operators are used at each pixel to measure the curvature information at that pixel. These four directions are 0 , 45 , 90 and 135 , respectively. All these four directional contrast data are then grouped together in subsequent processes.
\section{\small{COLOR CONTRAST IN THE CIE LAB COLOR SPACE}}
In color image segmentation, a proper choice of color space is also a crucial issue. In the selection of color space, we choose the CIE $L^*a^*b^*$ color space to work on due to its three major properties: $1)$ separation of achromatic information from chromatic information, $2)$ uniform color space, and $3)$ similar to human visual perception $[12]$. Here,$L^*$  represents the luminance component, while $a^*$ and $b^*$ represent color components. The formulae for converting an RGB image into the coordinates can be found in many color-related articles, like $[12]$ and $[13]$.\\
\begin{figure}
\centering
\includegraphics[width=2.0in]{Image2}
\caption {\scriptsize{Fig. 3. Example of the test pattern in the subjective experiment.}}
\label{Fig3}
\end{figure}
In the CIE color space, the Euclidean distance between and , defined as $(4)$ is approximately equivalent to the perceptual difference between these two colors $[4]$, $[12]$. By incorporating this color difference formula into our contrast definition, we define the color contrast across an edge as$(5)$ To further explore the correlation between color contrast and the luminance level or color level, we made a subjective experiment. In our experiment, $10$ observers are involved and the patterns are displayed over a calibrated ViewSonic PT775 monitor for comparisons. Here, the values of luminance/color contrast are coarsely quantized into eleven steps, 0, 5, 10, 15, …, 50. In
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
\end{document}


The desired output look like this image :

Any help or hints to achive this work will be appreciated. I spent a lot of time to do that without any success. I'm newbie to latex. Best regards.

• Hi and welcome, i don't think i understand the question. Can you elaborate on that? – Johannes_B Dec 24 '14 at 18:56
• This account of yours seem unregistered. You may want to merge it with your Stack Overflow account. – Werner Dec 24 '14 at 19:20
• johannes_b: Using latex i want to reproduce the same pdf as the attached image (which is a true pdf file). The problem that i'm facing is the positioning of the figures in a twocolumn document.So in the same page i want to place the 1st image in the top center in onecolumn and the 2 other figures in two column. – user3072470 Dec 24 '14 at 19:47
• it's never going to work with this minimum example -- you can't get a two-column figure at the top of the first page, or indeed (without "cheating") anywhere on the first page. try putting some text on that page, and then a \clearpage and see if that improves the situation. also, you don't need to put "figure n" in the caption -- that's done automatically with the figure environment and \caption information. – barbara beeton Dec 24 '14 at 19:59
• here is the code + the pdf to reproduce + the images. I'm using miktex 2.9 cspsat.selfip.com/latex.rar – user3072470 Dec 24 '14 at 20:02

If I add \lipsum[1-10] (with \usepackage{lipsum} just before the code you provided and fix the figure code, I get exactly what you seem to want.

I only changed times into mathptmx (the former is obsolete).

\documentclass[10pt,a4paper,twoside,twocolumn]{article}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage[left=0.53in,right=0.83in,top=0.3in,bottom=1.7in]{geometry}
%\usepackage[hmarginratio=1:1]{geometry}
\usepackage{fancyhdr}
%\usepackage{multicol}
\usepackage{mathptmx}
\usepackage{lettrine}
\usepackage{graphicx}
\usepackage{amsmath}
\usepackage{amssymb}
\usepackage{amsthm}
\usepackage{etoolbox}% http://ctan.org/pkg/etoolbox
\usepackage{sectsty}
\usepackage{lipsum}
%\usepackage{float}
%\usepackage[hang]{footmisc}
%
\pagestyle{fancy}
\renewcommand\thesection{\Roman{section}.}
%\renewcommand\thesubsection{\thesection.\arabic{subsection}}
\setlength{\columnsep}{0.43cm}
\setlength{\parindent}{0.16in}
%\setlength\footnotemargin{10pt} %
%\footnotesep is the space between footnotes:
%\setlength{\footnotesep}{0.5cm}
%\footins is the space between the text body and the footnotes:
\setlength{\skip\footins}{0.70cm}
\renewcommand*\footnoterule{}
%\pdfpagewidth 8.5in
%\pdfpageheight 11in
%\footerheight 55pt
%\lhead{\scriptsize{IEEE SIGNAL PROCESSING LETTERS, VOL. 11, NO. 7, JULY 2004}}
\fancyhead[LO,RE]{\scriptsize{IEEE SIGNAL PROCESSING LETTERS, VOL. 11, NO. 7, JULY 2004}}
\cfoot{}
%\rfoot{Right bottom}
%\cfoot{\thepage}
%\lfoot{Left bottom}
%Control the footnote indent
%\makeatletter
%\renewcommand\@makefntext[1]{%
% \noindent\makebox[0.1em][r]{\@makefnmark}#1}
%\makeatother
%
%{\normalfont\fontfamily{phv}\fontsize{16}{19}\bfseries}{\thesection}{1em}{}
%\titleformat{\section}
% {\normalfont\fontfamily{ptmr}\fontsize{16}{19}}{\thesection}{1em}{}
%\titleformat{\subsection}
% {\normalfont\fontfamily{ptmr}\fontsize{14}{17}}{\thesubsection}{1em}{}
%\titleformat{\subsubsection}
% {\normalfont\fontfamily{ptmr}\fontsize{14}{17}}{\thesubsubsection}{1em}{}
%
\makeatletter
\patchcmd{\section}{\bfseries}{\relax}{}{}% Non-bold \section
\patchcmd{\subsection}{\bfseries}{\relax}{}{}% Non-bold \subsection
\makeatother
%
\allsectionsfont{\centering}
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
% Alter some LaTeX defaults for better treatment of figures:
% See p.105 of "TeX Unbound" for suggested values.
% See pp. 199-200 of Lamport's "LaTeX" book for details.
%   General parameters, for ALL pages:
\renewcommand{\topfraction}{0.9}    % max fraction of floats at top
\renewcommand{\bottomfraction}{0.8} % max fraction of floats at bottom
%   Parameters for TEXT pages (not float pages):
\setcounter{topnumber}{2}
\setcounter{bottomnumber}{2}
\setcounter{totalnumber}{4}     % 2 may work better
\setcounter{dbltopnumber}{2}    % for 2-column pages
\renewcommand{\dbltopfraction}{0.9} % fit big float above 2-col. text
\renewcommand{\textfraction}{0.07}  % allow minimal text w. figs
%   Parameters for FLOAT pages (not text pages):
\renewcommand{\floatpagefraction}{0.7}  % require fuller float pages
% N.B.: floatpagefraction MUST be less than topfraction !!
\renewcommand{\dblfloatpagefraction}{0.7}   % require fuller float pages

% remember to use [htp] or [htpb] for placement
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
\begin{document}
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
\lipsum[1-10]

%%%%%%%% ORIGINAL CODE (fixed)
\begin{figure*}
\centering
\includegraphics[width=3.0in]{Image1}
\caption{(a) Intensity profile extracted from a real image. (b) The estimated 1st
derivative information. (c) The estimated contrast information with $\sigma = 2:0.$}
\label{Fig1}
\end{figure*}

\begin{figure}[t]
\centering
\includegraphics[width=0.75\columnwidth]{Image3}
\caption{Definition of contrast.}
\label{Fig2}
\end{figure}

By convoluting a profile  $I(x)$ with this operator, we have
$$\label{eq:3} \varphi (x)=I(x)\otimes B(x)= I(x) - I(x)\otimes N(x;0,\sigma).$$
Basically, $\varphi (x)$ can be imagined as the 2nd derivative of the profile I(x).
Moreover, the local extremes of $\varphi (x)$ correspond to the high-curvature points of
$I(x)$. Fig. 1(c) shows the contrast information extracted from Fig. 1(a) using (3)
with$\sigma = 2.0$ , which is determined empirically. It is obvious that Fig. 1(c) offers
much more reliable information than Fig. 1(b).\\ Since the 2nd derivative is
orientation-dependent, the contrast information at an image pixel has to be measured along
various orientations. In the proposed algorithm, we detect boundaries by checking the
relations between each pixel and its eight neighbors. Hence, four directional operators are
used at each pixel to measure the curvature information at that pixel. These four
directions are 0 , 45 , 90 and 135 , respectively. All these four directional contrast data
are then grouped together in subsequent processes. \section{\small{COLOR CONTRAST IN THE
CIE LAB COLOR SPACE}} In color image segmentation, a proper choice of color space is also a
crucial issue. In the selection of color space, we choose the CIE $L^*a^*b^*$ color space
to work on due to its three major properties: $1)$ separation of achromatic information
from chromatic information, $2)$ uniform color space, and $3)$ similar to human visual
perception $[12]$. Here,$L^*$ represents the luminance component, while $a^*$ and $b^*$ represent color components. The formulae for converting an RGB image into the coordinates
can be found in many color-related articles, like $[12]$ and $[13]$.\\

\begin{figure}
\centering
\includegraphics[width=2.0in]{Image2}
\caption{Example of the test pattern in the subjective experiment.}
\label{Fig3}
\end{figure}

In the CIE color space, the Euclidean distance between and , defined as $(4)$ is
approximately equivalent to the perceptual difference between these two colors $[4]$,
$[12]$. By incorporating this color difference formula into our contrast definition, we
define the color contrast across an edge as$(5)$ To further explore the correlation between
color contrast and the luminance level or color level, we made a subjective experiment. In
our experiment, $10$ observers are involved and the patterns are displayed over a
calibrated ViewSonic PT775 monitor for comparisons. Here, the values of luminance/color
contrast are coarsely quantized into eleven steps, 0, 5, 10, 15, …, 50. In

\end{document}


Note that you had figure instead of figure*; it's irrelevant what options you specify, because figure* will only go at the top.

I left a blank line before and after each of the figure environments. What you should do, when the document is in its final form as far as the text is concerned, is

• place the code for figure* somewhere between two paragraphs in the page that precedes where you want it

• move up or down in the document the two figure environments until they happen to be where you want

The second point shouldn't require too labor.

• Thank you very much, You have saved my life, i spent five days trying to solve the issue without success. Chapeaux. – user3072470 Dec 24 '14 at 22:41