Renumbering figure in LaTeX?

Question

How can I make figures be renumbered in a TeX document? I want the main figures to be 1, 2, 3, ...etc. But then I want a section to have supplementary figures, S1, S2, S3, S4. The "S" does not have to appear in the figure name, but I do want to reset the counter.

Etymologize

This would be better asked on the TeX/LaTeX Stack Exchange site, now in public beta: tex.stackexchange.com/questions – Gavin

have you looked at the caption package? – Refractive

See tex.stackexchange.com/questions/41318/… and bytesizebio.net/2013/03/11/… for more information and tex.stackexchange.com/questions/39315/… and tex.stackexchange.com/questions/85776/… for more info – Earthward

Answer 1

Next to reseting the counter for the figures:

\setcounter{figure}{0}

You can also add the "S" by using:

\makeatletter 
\renewcommand{\thefigure}{S\@arabic\c@figure}
\makeatother

Fidge

You should always use \makeatother after this or it will mess up the use of @ in commands. – Coussoule

Works for subfigures too: \setcounter{subfigure}{0}. – Guardant

For being able to restore the original behaviour: \let\originalthefigure\thefigure before this, and \let\thefigure\originalthefigure when you want to restore it – Ill

Answer 2

you can reset the figure counter with

\setcounter{figure}{0}

Argillite