floatsstarred-versiontwo-column
I am writing a journal which has two column. I am using {figure} as well as {figure*} to place the figures in one column as well as stretch across two columns.
My problem is the order of the figures are not correct. e.g. their order of appearance is:
Figure 1.
Figure 2.
Figure 5.
Figure 3.
Figure 4.
What should I do to make them appear in order?
This is a known problem in LaTeX2e; it is fixed by loading the fixltx2e package.
Following some guidelines from How to place a multicolumn figure above a single column figure and a single column table?, here's an approach:
\documentclass[twocolumn]{article}
\usepackage{afterpage,lipsum,capt-of,graphicx}% http://ctan.org/pkg/{afterpage,lipsum,capt-of,graphicx}
\usepackage[margin=1in]{geometry}% Just for this example
\begin{document}
\lipsum[1-7]
\begin{figure*}
\centering\includegraphics[width=.7\linewidth,height=2in]{example-image-a}\par
\caption{This is a figure caption}
\end{figure*}%
\afterpage{%
\noindent\begin{minipage}{\columnwidth}
\centering
\includegraphics[width=.8\linewidth,height=4\baselineskip]{example-image-b}
\captionof{figure}{This is anoth figure caption}
\vspace*{\textfloatsep}% Insert "regular" gap between float and text
\end{minipage}%
}
\lipsum[8-14]
\end{document}
figure* prints the figure at the top of the following page (by default) in twocolumn mode. Immediately following the placement of figure* in your code, we use \afterpage to manually insert content on the following page. As such, they should end up one following the other, only that the second one will be part of the running text, and therefore be positioned inside the first column.
Instead of floating the second (column) figure, we place it in a minipage of width \columnwidth (and some vertical separation between the "float" and text; see How can I inject the proper amount of vertical space between captions and figures?). Since we're using a minipage and not a float, capt-of helps us set the appropriate caption.
Best Answer
Try the package
fixltx2e. It contains a fix for the "1-col fig can come before earlier 2-col fig"-bug.