Two captions, one figure, one line

Question

I have a figure that contains two images side by side. I want the first to be Figure 1 and the second image to be Figure 2. I'd like to have the caption written beneath both of them.

\begin{figure}[h]
  \centering
  \includegraphics[scale=1]{discussionfig1}
  \includegraphics[scale=1]{discussionfig2}
  \caption{}
  \caption{}
\end{figure}

This is what I have right now.

Answer 1

In essence you need to place each of the elements in a block. This can be achieved either via a tabular, or via a minipage (other options also exist). Below I've used a set of minipages:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{graphicx}
\begin{document}

\begin{figure}
  \begin{minipage}[b]{.45\textwidth}
    \centering
    \includegraphics[width=.8\linewidth]{example-image-a}
    \caption{Some caption that is associated with the left figure.}
  \end{minipage}\hfill
  \begin{minipage}[b]{.45\textwidth}
    \centering
    \includegraphics[width=.7\linewidth]{example-image-b}
    \caption{Some caption that is associated with the right figure.}
  \end{minipage}
\end{figure}

\end{document}

Each minipage is aligned at the [b]ottom so that different-sized images (vertically) still have their captions aligned as expected. Of course, you can adjust this.

The width of the minipages are set to .45\textwidth, totalling 90% of the text block width. The remaining 10% is \hfilled to provide some gap between the captions (this necessarily pushes both boxes flush left/right with the text block). Again, you can adjust this to suit your needs.

Answer 2

Use the floatrow package for that:

\documentclass[]{report}
\usepackage[a4paper,showframe]{geometry}
\usepackage{subcaption}
\usepackage{lipsum}
\usepackage[demo]{graphicx}
\usepackage{floatrow}

\begin{document}

\vspace*{4ex}
\begin{figure}[!htb]
\begin{floatrow}[2]\
\ffigbox{\caption{discussion1} \label{fig:discussion1}}%
{\includegraphics[width=0.4\textwidth]{discussionfig1}}
%
%%%%%%
\ffigbox{\caption{discussion2}\label{fig:discussion2}}%
{\includegraphics[width=0.3\textwidth]{discussionfig1}}

\end{floatrow}
\end{figure}%

\end{document}