Using Graphics

Last updated on 2026-04-08 | Edit this page

Overview

Questions

  • How do I include images in a LaTeX document?

Objectives

  • Demonstrate how to include images in a LaTeX document.
  • Show how to position images manually / automatically in a LaTeX document.

The Graphicx Package

In order to use graphics in our document, we’ll need to use the graphicx package, which adds the \includegraphics command to LaTeX. We’ll add this to the preamble of our document:

LATEX 

\usepackage{graphicx}

We can now include several types of images in our document, including:

  • JPEG
  • PNG
  • SVG
  • PDF
  • EPS
Callout

Although LaTeX can handle several commonly used image formats, there are a few which are currently incompatible with LaTeX. For example, the webp and tiff formats. If you have an image in one of these formats, you will need to convert it to a compatible format before including it in your document.

For the purposes of this lesson, we’ll use the following image:

Our example image.
Callout

Download this image to your computer either be right-clicking on the image and selecting “Save Image As…” or by clicking on the image and saving it from the browser.

You can use any image you like for this lesson. Just make sure to replace my-awesome-image.png with the name of your image in the following examples.

Place the image in the same directory as your LaTeX document so that LaTeX can find it when we compile the document.

Callout

There is a command called \graphicspath that allows you to specify a directory where LaTeX should look for images. This can be useful if you have a dedicated folder for your images. For example, if you have a folder called images in the same directory as your LaTeX document, you can add the following line to your preamble:

LATEX 

\graphicspath{{images/}}

This tells LaTeX to look for images in the images folder when you use the \includegraphics command.

Including an Image in a LaTeX Document

Now that we have our image, we can include it in our document using the \includegraphics command:

LATEX 

\section{Graphics}

We can include \kw{images} in our document using the \cmd{graphicx} package, which lets us use the
\cmd{includegraphics} command.

\includegraphics{my-awesome-image}

Your document should now look like this:

Our document with an included image.
Callout

If you just want to see how an image might look in your document without having to find one, you can use the filepath example-image in the \includegraphics command. This will display a placeholder image in your document that you can replace later.

Adjusting the appearance of the image

But wait! The image is too big, and it doesn’t fit on the page, so LaTeX has moved it to the next page. Since the image is a little too large to fit on the same page as the text, LaTeX has moved it automatically to the next page. Let’s address that by making the image smaller.

We can adjust the appearance of the image by passing options to the \includegraphics command, just like we did earlier with the geometry package. For example, we can specify the height of the image:

LATEX 

\subsection{Small Image}

We can pass parameters to the \cmd{includegraphics} command to adjust the appearance of the image.

\includegraphics[height=2cm]{my-awesome-image}
Our document with a smaller image.
Callout

Some other possible options from the graphicx package include:

  • width: the width of the image
  • scale: the scaling factor of the image
  • angle: the angle of rotation of the image
  • clip: whether to clip the image to its bounding box
  • trim: trim the image by a specified amount
  • draft: display a box instead of the image
Callout

The \linewidth command can be used to specify the width of the image relative to the width of the text. For example, width=0.5\linewidth would make the image half the width of the text, rather than having to specify exact values.

This is particuarly useful in multi-column layouts, where the width of the text may vary depending on the number of columns.

Caution

Overfull Boxes

Now that we have included an image in our document, we have another kind of error we might encounter - “overfull boxes”. This happens when the content of a box (like an image or a paragraph of text) is too large to fit within the specified dimensions of the box, and it overflows into the margins.

The following code generates this warning message:

LATEX 

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage{graphicx}
\begin{document}

\section{Adding a rotated image}

We can rotate an image by setting the "angle" parameter:

\includegraphics[scale=2, angle=45]{example-image}
\end{document}

The document compiles successfully, but there was some text that briefly appeared in the console output. Let’s look at the .log file to see what it says:

Overfull \hbox (390.7431pt too wide) in paragraph at lines 10--11
[][]
 []



[1

{c:/texlive/2025/texmf-var/fonts/map/pdftex/updmap/pdftex.map}]
Overfull \vbox (170.7431pt too high) has occurred while \output is active []



[2 <./example-image.png>] (./main.aux)

This means that the text or image is too wide or too tall for the page, and it is overflowing into the margins. To fix this, we can adjust the size of the image or the layout of the page to ensure that everything fits within the specified dimensions.

Note that there may be times when we actually want the image to overflow into the margins, for example if we want to include an image that extends to the edges of the page. In this case, we can ignore the warning message and proceed with our document - this warning will not prevent our document from compiling successfully.

Positioning the image

We can place the image inside of an environment to help position it in the document. Let’s try placing the \includegraphics command inside of a \begin{center} and \end{center} environment:

LATEX 

\subsection{Centered Image}

By placing the \cmd{includegraphics} command inside a center environment, we can center the
image on the page.

\begin{center}
  \includegraphics[height=2cm]{my-awesome-image}
\end{center}

You should see that the image is now centered on the page:

Our document with a centered image.

“Floating” Images

It’s often the case that images need to “float” around the document as new text is added or removed. this is called a “floating” image. Images are normally included as floats so that we don’t end up with large gaps in the document.

To make an image float, we can use the figure environment:

LATEX 

\subsection{Floating Image}

\kw{Floating images} can move around the page as text is added or removed. We can use the
\cmd{figure}environment to create a floating image.

\begin{figure}
  \centering
  \includegraphics[height=2cm]{my-awesome-image}
\end{figure}

When we render the document, we can see that, even though we placed the image at the end of the document, it appears at the top of the page:

Our document with a floating image.
Callout

You might have noticed that instead of using the \begin{center} and \end{center} environment, we used the \centering command inside of the figure environment. This is because the figure environment is a floating environment, and the \centering command is the recommended way to center content inside of a floating environment.

Controlling the Position of a Floating Image

We can pass parameters to the figure environment to control the position of the floating image:

  • h: Place the float “here” (where it appears in the code)
  • t: Place the float at the “top” of the page
  • b: Place the float at the “bottom” of the page
  • p: Place the float on a “page” by itself

It is also possible to combine these options. For example, to place the float here if possible, but otherwise at the top of the page, we can use the ht option. Let’s update our figure environment to use the ht option:

LATEX 

\begin{figure}[ht]
  \centering
  \includegraphics[height=2cm]{my-awesome-image}
\end{figure}

Control the position of a floating image by passing parameters to the \cmd{figure} environment:

\begin{itemize}
  \item h: "here"
  \item t: "top"
  \item b: "bottom"
  \item p: "page"
\end{itemize}
Callout

You can use the package wrapfig together with graphicx in your preamble. This makes the wrapfigure environment available and we can place an \includegraphics command inside it to create a figure around which text will be wrapped. Here is how we can specify a wrapfigure environment:

LATEX 

\begin{wrapfigure}[lineheight]{position}{width}
  ...
\end{wrapfigure}

We will describe the wrapfigure environment in more detail in one of the challenges below.

Adding a Caption

We can add a caption to our image by using the \caption command inside of the figure environment:

LATEX 

\subsection{Caption}

We can add a \kw{caption} to our floating image by using the \cmd{caption} command inside of the
\cmd{figure} environment.

\begin{figure}
  \centering
  \includegraphics[height=2cm]{my-awesome-image}
  \caption{This is a caption for our image.}
\end{figure}

When we render the document, we can see that the caption appears below the image:

Our document with a floating image.
Callout

Note that the caption is automatically numbered “Figure 1”. Very handy! We’ll see how we can automatically reference figures and tables in a later episode.

Another package that we can use to work with images in LaTeX is the hvfloat package. This package is an alterantive way of controlling the position of floating elements in LaTeX, like images and tables. It provides a more flexible way of positioning floats allowing us to, for example, place a float at the bottom of the page, even if there is not enough space for it to fit.

Callout

There’s a command called \listoffigures that will generate a list of all of the figures in your document. This will only list the figures that have a caption, so make sure to add a caption to any figure you want to be included in the list.

Challenges

Challenge

Challenge 1: Can you do it?

Consider again our running example of example-image.PNG. Include this image into your LaTeX document by using the figure environment. Make sure that your image is centered and rotate the image by 45 degree. Add the following caption to your image: “This caption has a bold word included.” How would your LaTeX look like?

We use the \centering command in the figure environment and specify angle=45 to rotate the image.

LATEX 

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage{graphicx}

\begin{document}

\begin{figure}
  \centering
  \includegraphics[angle=45]{my-awesome-image}
  \caption{This caption has a \textbf{bold} word included.}
\end{figure}

\end{document}
Challenge

Challenge 2: What is wrong here?

Have a look at the following LaTeX code:

LATEX 

\documentclass{article}

\begin{document}

\centering
\begin{figure}
  \includegraphics[height=3cm, draft]{my-awesome-image}
  \caption{This caption has a \textbf{bold} word included.}
\end{figure}

\end{document}

Can you spot all the errors in this LaTeX code? Change the code such that the image is displayed with a height of 3cm, width of 4cm and centered.

  1. the command \usepackage{graphicx} is missing in the preamble.
  2. the \centering command has to be placed into the figure environment.
  3. the draft argument has to be removed from the \includegraphics command and width=4cm added.

The corrected LaTeX code looks like this:

LATEX 

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage{graphicx}

\begin{document}

\begin{figure}
  \centering
  \includegraphics[height=3cm, width=4cm]{my-awesome-image}
  \caption{This caption has a \textbf{bold} word included.}
\end{figure}

\end{document}
Challenge

Challenge 3: Making a command for images

In the previous section, we created a command to highlight keywords in our document. Let’s create a new command to make it easier to include images in our document. We’ll create a command called \centeredimage that takes two arguments: the image filename and the caption. The resulting image should be centered on the page and have a caption below it. Use the example-image.png from earlier in this episode.

Your file should look like this:

LATEX 

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{graphicx}

% Define our new command
%%% YOUR COMMAND HERE %%%

\begin{document}

\centeredimage{example-image.png}{"My Image"}
\centeredimage{example-image.png}{"My Other Image"}

\end{document}

And your output should look like this.

Reminder: The syntax for creating a new command is:

LATEX 

\newcommand{\cmdname}[numargs]{definition}

LATEX 

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{graphicx}

% Define our new command
\newcommand{\centeredimage}[2]{
  \begin{figure}
    \centering
    \includegraphics{#1}
    \caption{#2}
  \end{figure}
}

\begin{document}

\centeredimage{my-awesome-image}{"My Image"}
\centeredimage{my-awesome-image}{"My Other Image"}

\end{document}
Challenge

Challenge 4: The wrapfig package.

Have a look at the following LaTeX code that uses the wrapfigure environment. Can you already guess how the images will be displayed in your document?

LATEX 

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage{wrapfig}
\usepackage{graphicx}

\begin{document}

\begin{wrapfigure}{r}{0.1\textwidth}
    \centering
    \includegraphics[width=0.1\textwidth, height=0.1\textwidth]{my-awesome-image}
\end{wrapfigure}

The package wrapfigure lets you position images around your text.
That comes in handy if you want to integrate images seamlessly into your written sentences.
Therefore, I add a few more sentences here to showcase this integration to you.

\begin{wrapfigure}{l}{0.1\textwidth}
    \centering
    \includegraphics[width=0.1\textwidth, height=0.1\textwidth]{example-image.PNG}
\end{wrapfigure}

Be careful, you need both packages, wrapfig and graphicx, in your preamble to display your images
and wrap them accordingly. There are several ways to display images, depending on the arguments you
specify. For instance, you can scale the image width according to the width of the text.

\end{document}

The first image will be placed at the right of the following paragraph of text as {r} is specified as an argument within the first wrapfigure environment. The second image will be placed at the left of its following paragraph of text as {l} is specified as an argument within the second wrapfigure environment. Moreover, both images are scaled by being 0.1 of the width of the text in your document.

Key Points
  • The graphicx package allows us to include images in our LaTeX document.
  • We can adjust the appearance of images using options in the \includegraphics command.
  • We can position images manually or automatically using environments like center and figure.
  • Floating images can move around the page as text is added or removed.
  • We can control the position of floating images using parameters in the figure environment.
  • We can add captions to floating images using the \caption command.