LaTeX figures side by side

Question

I want to place 2 images side by side in LaTeX. I have 2 .png files and I don't understand how to do it in LaTeX. I have tried many ways but could not get a good result.

Answer 1

For two independent side-by-side figures, you can use two minipages inside a figure enviroment; for two subfigures, I would recommend the subcaption package with its subfigure environment; here's an example showing both approaches:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[demo]{graphicx}
\usepackage{caption}
\usepackage{subcaption}
\begin{document}
\begin{figure}
\centering
\begin{subfigure}{.5\textwidth}
  \centering
  \includegraphics[width=.4\linewidth]{image1}
  \caption{A subfigure}
  \label{fig:sub1}
\end{subfigure}%
\begin{subfigure}{.5\textwidth}
  \centering
  \includegraphics[width=.4\linewidth]{image1}
  \caption{A subfigure}
  \label{fig:sub2}
\end{subfigure}
\caption{A figure with two subfigures}
\label{fig:test}
\end{figure}
\begin{figure}
\centering
\begin{minipage}{.5\textwidth}
  \centering
  \includegraphics[width=.4\linewidth]{image1}
  \captionof{figure}{A figure}
  \label{fig:test1}
\end{minipage}%
\begin{minipage}{.5\textwidth}
  \centering
  \includegraphics[width=.4\linewidth]{image1}
  \captionof{figure}{Another figure}
  \label{fig:test2}
\end{minipage}
\end{figure}
\end{document}

The demo option for graphicx was used only to make my example compilable for everyone; you shouldn't use that option in your actual code.

The % (between \end{subfigure} and \begin{subfigure} or minipage) is really important; not suppressing it will cause a spurious blank space to be added, the total length will surpass \textwidth and the figures will end up not side-by-side.

Answer 2

\usepackage{subfig}

The PDF documentation with lots of examples can be found here: subfig.pdf

Note that you'll see a lot of references to "subfigure" on the net, but that's outdated now.

Here is a small example taken from the documentation

\documentclass[10pt,a4paper]{article}
\usepackage[demo]{graphicx}
\usepackage{subfig}
\begin{document}
\begin{figure}%
    \centering
    \subfloat[\centering label 1]{{\includegraphics[width=5cm]{img1} }}%
    \qquad
    \subfloat[\centering label 2]{{\includegraphics[width=5cm]{img2} }}%
    \caption{2 Figures side by side}%
    \label{fig:example}%
\end{figure}
\end{document}

Output:

Answer 3

You could use the subfigure package:

\begin{figure}
\hfill
\subfigure[Title A]{\includegraphics[width=5cm]{img1}}
\hfill
\subfigure[Title B]{\includegraphics[width=5cm]{img2}}
\hfill
\caption{Title for both}
\end{figure}

Or try this use the subfig package with \usepackage{subfig}:

\begin{figure}
\centering
\parbox{5cm}{
\includegraphics[width=5cm]{img1}
\caption{First.}
\label{fig:2figsA}}
\qquad
\begin{minipage}{5cm}
\includegraphics[width=5cm]{img2}
\caption{Second.}
\label{fig:2figsB}
\end{minipage}
\end{figure}

Answer 4

Since you didn't tell anything about whether these figures are going to be sub-figures or figures with continued numbering, here is an example that uses the floatrow package.

\documentclass[11pt]{article}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage{floatrow}

\begin{document}
  \begin{figure}[!ht]
    \centering
    \begin{floatrow}
      \ffigbox[\FBwidth]{\caption{Dummy figure}\label{fig:dummy-1}}{%
        \rule{1.6in}{0.9in}   % Just a dummy. Replace with your figure.
      }
      \ffigbox[\FBwidth]{\caption{Dummy figure}\label{fig:dummy-2}}{%
        \rule{1.6in}{0.9in}   % Just a dummy. Replace with your figure.
      }
    \end{floatrow}
  \end{figure}
\end{document}

Note that you have to replace the \rule commands with the images you want to include. For details please see the package manual.