Maximise vertical space between subfigures with \subcaption

Question

I have 2 subfigures vertically arranged using the subcaption package. I can set the vertical space between the 2 to something specific (using \bigskip or \vspace), but I would like to put as much space as possible between the 2 instead, so that the first subfigure is at the top of the page, and the second one at the bottom (with the caption for the whole figure beneath it) - something like \vfill.

Minimal working example:

\documentclass[10pt,a4paper]{article}
\usepackage{graphicx}
\usepackage{subcaption}

\begin{document}
\begin{figure}
    \begin{subfigure}{\textwidth}
        \centering \rule{4cm}{4cm} % 1st subfigure: \includegraphics{fig}...
    \end{subfigure}
    \par\bigskip % maximise vertical space here instead
    \begin{subfigure}{\textwidth}
        \centering \rule{4cm}{4cm} % 2nd subfigure: \includegraphics{fig}...
    \end{subfigure}
\caption{Some caption}
\end{figure}
\end{document}

Welcome to TeX.SE! Have you tried \vspace*{\fill} as the "filler" instruction? — Mico, Nov 28 '13 at 19:48
@HarishKumar, strange! I'm getting the error Environment subfigure undefined. — Sigur, Nov 28 '13 at 23:03
@Sigur Normally not needed. subcaption can be standalone. May be you have to update. — , Nov 28 '13 at 23:16

score 15 · Answer 1 · answered Feb 19 '14 at 19:07

15

I put a \vspace*{...} inside the subfigure block, just before \end{subfigure}. It applied the specified amount of spacing between my three subfigures. I did not try it using \fill, but I expect it would have a similar result. I've included a vague snippet of my code below. Hooray for simplicity!

\begin{figure*}[htb]
    \begin{subfigure}[t]{\linewidth}
        \label{}
        \centering\includegraphics[]{image1.eps}
        \caption{}
        \vspace*{2mm}
    \end{subfigure}
    \begin{subfigure}[c]{\linewidth}
        \label{}
        \centering\includegraphics[]{image2.eps}
        \caption{}
        \vspace*{2mm}
    \end{subfigure}
    \begin{subfigure}[b]{\linewidth}
        \label{}
        \centering\includegraphics[]{image3.eps}
        \caption{}
    \end{subfigure}
\end{figure*}

answered Feb 19 '14 at 19:07

Shlalex

151

2

Welcome to TeX.SX! Please make your code compilable (if possible), or at least complete it with \documentclass{...}, the required \usepackage's, \begin{document}, and \end{document}. That may seem tedious to you, but think of the extra work it represents for TeX.SX users willing to give you a hand. Help them help you: remove that one hurdle between you and a solution to your problem. – Adam Liter Feb 19 '14 at 19:30
It works for me. But starred versions of figure and vspace are not needed. Latex2e tells me that figure* is for double column formats (to span both columns) and https://tex.stackexchange.com/q/89082/157031 gave info on vspace*. – Cyriac Antony Jan 31 '19 at 05:10

score 6 · Answer 2 · answered Nov 28 '13 at 23:01

I don't know why \vspace{\fill} is not working in between. Hence this is a work-around using a parbox:

\documentclass[10pt,a4paper]{article}
\usepackage{graphicx}
\usepackage{subcaption}
\usepackage{showframe}   %% just for demo

\begin{document}
\begin{figure}
    \begin{subfigure}{\textwidth}
       \parbox[t][.48\textheight]{\linewidth}{%  .48 because you have caption below
        \centering \rule{4cm}{4cm}}% 
    \end{subfigure}%
    \par
    \begin{subfigure}{\textwidth}
        \parbox[b][.48\textheight]{\linewidth}{%   %  .48 because you have caption below
        \centering \rule{4cm}{4cm}} 
    \end{subfigure}
\caption{Some caption}
\end{figure}
\end{document}

enter image description here

You can get rid of subfigure and use \parboxes or minipages directly where you can specify the height and width both.

Thanks for this workaround. It's working, however it still requires some manual tweaking to adjust the size of the \parbox depending on the length of the figure's caption - which I would have preferred to avoid. (NB: I'm keeping the subfigure to label / reference the subfigures) — tave, Nov 29 '13 at 12:26

Alessandro Cuttin · Answer 3 · 2020-06-03T19:16:48.300

I post this answer as a note to my future self when I will try to do this again :)

In the following MWE the space between figures is maximized thanks to a stretchable vertical space. In addition to that, for a better look, other two \vspace{\fill} are used to equally distribute the images along the vertical.

To allow the stretchable spaces to have effect, everything is enclosed in a minipage with dimensions equal to the text area.

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage[showframe]{geometry}
\usepackage[demo]{graphicx}
\usepackage{subcaption}

\begin{document}
\begin{figure}[p]
    \begin{minipage}[][\textheight][c]{\textwidth}
        \vspace{\fill}
        \begin{subfigure}{\textwidth}
            \centering
            \includegraphics{first}
            \caption{}
            \label{fig:first}
        \end{subfigure}
        \vfill
        \begin{subfigure}{\textwidth}
            \centering
            \includegraphics{second}
            \caption{}
            \label{fig:second}
        \end{subfigure}
        \vspace{\fill}
    \end{minipage}
\end{figure}
\end{document}

Maximise vertical space between subfigures with \subcaption

3 Answers3