captionstable of contents
Now, there are many 'solutions' for this problem on the internet, but they all seem a bit messy to me.
Like for e.g. this one: Link to ' Community'
Is there a proper solution for this? As this is something very common to do (for example if you have an image on your titlepage and you need it to show up in the list of figures, but you don't want a caption for aesthetical reasons), I think this question is not just pointless.
Thanks for your help in advance.
You can use the caption package and its skip key inside a \captionsetup with local effect (use the desired length instead of the 0pt I chose for the example):
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{graphicx}
\usepackage{caption}
\begin{document}
\begin{figure}
\centering
\captionsetup{skip=0pt}
\includegraphics[width=6cm]{example-image-a}
\caption{A test caption}
\end{figure}
\begin{figure}
\centering
\includegraphics[width=6cm]{example-image-b}
\caption{A test caption}
\end{figure}
\end{document}
As mentioned in the comments, I don't think there's a way to change the caption position automatically. However, LaTeX provides two commands that can place the rule automatically for you: \topfigrule and \botfigrule. Here's an example, but as with Steven's solution, this still requires you to specify what placement the figure will be to get the caption correct. (Also, remember to makes sure your labels follow the caption command or are inside it.)
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[demo]{graphicx}
\usepackage{caption}
\usepackage{lipsum}
\newcommand{\topfigrule}{\vspace{5pt} \hrule \vspace{-5pt}}
\newcommand{\botfigrule}{\vspace{-5pt} \hrule \vspace{5pt}}
\begin{document}
\lipsum[1]
\begin{figure}[t]
\centering
\includegraphics[width=\columnwidth]{blackbox}
\caption{This figure is on the top. The caption should be on the bottom,
and the horizontal line under it.}
\label{fig:1}
\end{figure}
\lipsum[1]
\begin{figure}[b]
\centering
\caption{This figure is on the bottom, so it caption is above it. Now
the horizontal line should be also above this text...}
\label{fig:2}
\includegraphics[width=\columnwidth]{blackbox}
\end{figure}
\lipsum[1]
\end{document}
Best Answer
A more elegant way to do this is to use the
captionpackage, which allows you to specify special formats for an individual figure. Here's an example: