Mrthfx

I have a two column document that features a couple of high aspect ratio (tall) floats which, including the caption, take up more than half, but not a full column. When I compile Latex always seems to give the figures their own full column and pad around them with white space. Is there a way I can "push up" the text after the floats to fill in the column and minimize this white space?

From suggestions in the comments I have tried:

    setlength{intextsep}{1 pt}

and

    setlength{belowcaptionskip}{1 pt}

but this did not seem to change the whitespace above the figure and below the caption.

Here is a MWE:

documentclass[10pt,twocolumn]{article}

usepackage[margin=0.5in,showframe]{geometry}



usepackage[T1]{fontenc}

usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}

usepackage{graphicx}





usepackage{lipsum}

begin{document}

    lipsum[1-10]

    begin{figure}

    begin{center}

    includegraphics[width=50 pt, keepaspectratio]{./1x6.pdf}

    caption{lipsum[2]}

    end{center}

    end{figure}



    lipsum[1-10]

    begin{figure}

    begin{center}

    includegraphics[width=50 pt, keepaspectratio]{./1x6.pdf}

    caption{lipsum[2]}

    end{center}

    end{figure}

    lipsum[1-20]

end{document}

A screenshot of the output is shown below, where the black boxes are the 1x6.pdf that I want to include. Sorry, I couldn't figure out how to include the 1x6.pdf in this post for the community to reproduce this.

Maybe you are satisfied with the following result that can be obtained by changing the floatpagefraction from the default value to 0.75. With this value, a float only occupies an own page (in case of a twocolumn document an own column) if it is larger than 75% of the page.

documentclass[10pt,twocolumn]{article}

usepackage[margin=0.5in,showframe]{geometry}



usepackage[T1]{fontenc}

usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}

usepackage{graphicx}

renewcommand{floatpagefraction}{.75}%



usepackage{lipsum}

begin{document}

    lipsum[1-10]

    begin{figure}

    centering

    includegraphics[width=50 pt,  height=300pt]{example-image}

    caption{Some very long text text text text text text text text text text 

text text text text text text text text text text text text text 

text text text text text text text text text text text text text 

text text text text text text text text text text text text text 

text text text text text text text text text text text text text 

text text text text text text text text text text text text text 

text text text text text text text text text text text text text 

text text text text text text text text text text.}

    end{figure}



    lipsum[1-10]

    begin{figure}

    centering

    includegraphics[width=50 pt,  height=300pt]{example-image}

    caption{Some very long text text text text text text text text text text 

text text text text text text text text text text text text text 

text text text text text text text text text text text text text 

text text text text text text text text text text text text text 

text text text text text text text text text text text text text 

text text text text text text text text text text text text text 

text text text text text text text text text text.}

    end{figure}

    lipsum[1-20]

end{document}