subcaption

Subcaption is a LaTeX package that provides support for creating multiple subfigures within a single figure environment. Each subfigure can have its own caption and label, while sharing a common overall caption for the entire figure. This layout is commonly used to present related images or plots side by side or in a grid.

The package was designed as a successor to the older subfig package and is widely used in academic writing. It integrates with the caption package, allowing consistent formatting of captions across main and subfigures. Subcaption is included in most TeX distributions and is compatible with pdfLaTeX, XeLaTeX, and LuaLaTeX.

Usage generally begins with including the package in the preamble: usepackage{subcaption}. In the document, a figure environment contains multiple subfigure environments, each given a width such as 0.45\textwidth and containing an image and its own caption. A final caption outside the subfigures provides an overall description.

Example (illustrative): begin{figure} begin{subfigure}{0.45\textwidth} includegraphics[width=\linewidth]{image1} \caption{First image} \end{subfigure} \hfill begin{subfigure}{0.45\textwidth} includegraphics[width=\linewidth]{image2} \caption{Second image} \end{subfigure} \caption{Overall figure caption} end{figure}

The subcaption package offers options to customize label formatting via the caption package, such as turning sublabels into (a), (b) or adjusting label separation. It is generally not recommended to load both subcaption and subfig in the same document, to avoid conflicts.