Question

In LaTeX figures, one can use \textwidth and \columnwidth to specify sizes of the graphic relative to the size of surrounding text, e.g. \includegraphics[width=.5\textwidth]{myimage}.

I would like to easily switch from onecolumn to twocolumn template (and back) without the figure growing too large for onecolumn template. For twocolumn template (where \columnwidth is roughly half the \textwidth), I would like to have something like: \includegraphics[width=.9\columnwidth]{myimage}. and for onecolumn template (where \columnwidth and \textwidth are equal):
\includegraphics[width=.5\textwidth]{myimage}.

Now, I figured I could limit this using some kind of a min operator: \includegraphics[width=min(.5\textwidth,.9\columnwidth)]{myimage} but this is invalid syntax. Is there something like this to solve this problem, possibly through the use of LaTeX macro system?

Answer 1

Although it’s possible to write this sort of macro, I wouldn’t want to hardcode it into each figure; how about something like this

\makeatletter \newlength \figwidth \if@twocolumn   \setlength \figwidth {0.9\columnwidth} \else   \setlength \figwidth {0.5\textwidth} \fi \makeatother 

and then use

\includegraphics[width=\figwidth]{myimage} 

to insert the graphic.