Placing the figure exactly at the top of the page in Latex

Question

I have a problem in placing a picture into a page. I used a simple code as below:

\begin{figure}[t!]
  \centering
  \includegraphics[keepaspectratio, width=0.6\textwidth]{./pics/5_11}
  \caption{Number of RSUs that each vehicle has encountered}   
  \label{fig:RSUencountered} 
\end{figure}

The problem is that the picture is placed exactly in the middle, although I used position specifier (t!).

How can I instruct the latex to put the picture at the top of the page.

BTW: this picture is the only element in the page.

Page floats are handled differently. See How to influence the position of float environments like figure and table in LaTeX? and Keeping tables/figures close to where they are mentioned — Werner, Aug 07 '12 at 20:22
Do you have anything else on the other pages, or is your document just a single image that you want at the top of the page? — Werner, Aug 07 '12 at 20:23
@Werner: yes. Its a 100-page document, and this figure is the last element in one of the chapters. Latex puts it on a separate page, but in the middle of the page! — ManiAm, Aug 07 '12 at 20:29
What total portion of the page is the size of the float? 50%? 70%? 90%? — Werner, Aug 07 '12 at 20:32
I assume you issue a \clearpage (or something similar) just before using \begin{figure}...\end{figure}, right? If this is the case, add \mbox{} (or \null) after the figure environment before starting a new \chapter and your alignment should be fixed. Since there's nothing else on the page, LaTeX centres it, since that would be the best way to present the information. — Werner, Aug 07 '12 at 20:38
There must be other things causing this, and without a minimal working example (MWE) that illustrates your problem it is difficult to assess what to do. As a last resort, issuing using \clearpage\begin{figure}[t]...\end{figure}\null should work. Are you able to reproduce the problem on a smaller scale using something like lipsum for dummy text and (say) \rule{.6\textwidth}{.5\textheight} for your image? — Werner, Aug 07 '12 at 20:56

score 40 · Accepted Answer · answered Aug 07 '12 at 23:26

The vertical spacing above the top floatpage float is defined by \@fptop. The default value of this parameter is 0pt plus 1.0fil. Hence when you have a single figure on a separate page you get white space on top. (Similarly \@fpbot is for bottom space with the value 0pt plus 1.0fil. Hence you get white space on bottom also. And \@fpsep defines the vertical spacing between floatpage floats. The default is 8pt plus 2.0fil).

To have the figure on top, you have to define @\fptop as

\makeatletter
\setlength{\@fptop}{0pt}
\makeatother

The MWE:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[demo]{graphicx}
%
\makeatletter
\setlength{\@fptop}{0pt}
\makeatother
%
\begin{document}
\begin{figure}[t!]
  \centering
  \includegraphics[keepaspectratio, width=0.6\textwidth]{./pics/5_11}
  \caption{Number of RSUs that each vehicle has encountered}
  \label{fig:RSUencountered}
\end{figure}

\end{document}

What the purpose of \makeatletter and \makeatother command? — Mohammad Fajar, Feb 28 '14 at 08:11
@MohammadFajar You can't use @ in your preamble. It can be used only in a style file. For details see: What do \makeatletter and \makeatother do? — , Feb 28 '14 at 08:13

Placing the figure exactly at the top of the page in Latex

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