How do you add a header to a printed figure?

Suppose you wanted to write a script to make several pages of figures each with several small subplots that could be used as thumbnails. When done, you would like to print the figures each with a header containing the page number and the number of pages of similar plots. For example:

for page = 1:3
figure (page)
clf
for sub = 1:9
subplot(3,3,sub)
plot(1:100,rand(1,100))
end
set(gcf,'PaperPosition',[.25 .25 8 10])
%  add page header here  
end

and you want to put a header on the page like this

[Grzegorz Lippe]

Since R2018b there is sgtitle()

[Carl Hopkins]

Thank you Grzegorz Lippe:

This addition to Matlab sgtitle() is exactly the solution needed for this problem. A page of subplots needs to have its own title and this works seamlessly. Jan's answer has served as solution for the time being but this new function is perfect.

[Adam Danz]

If you're using tiledlaytout (Matlab R2019b and later), you can assign the title to the tiledlayout object.

figure
tlo = tiledlayout(3,3);
nexttile; nexttile; nexttile; 
nexttile; nexttile; nexttile; 
nexttile; nexttile; nexttile; 
title(tlo, 'Global Title', 'FontWeight','Bold','FontSize',18)

Answer 1

[Carl Hopkins]

see above for sbtitle()

Answer 2

[Jan]

Add a text to an invisible axes covering the complete figure:

AxesH = axes('Units', 'Normalized', 'Position', [0,0,1,1], 'Visisble', 'off', ...
             'NextPlot', 'add');
text(0.5, 0.99, 'Your figure title', 'Parent', AxesH, ...
     'Units', 'normalized', ...
     'VerticalAlignment', 'top', 'HorizontalAlignment', 'center');

[Carl Hopkins]

Brilliant ! Thank you very much.

AxesH = axes('Units', 'Normalized', 'Position', [0,0,1,1], 'Visible', 'off', ...
             'NextPlot', 'add');
text(0.5, 0.99, 'Your figure title', 'Parent', AxesH, ...
     'Units', 'normalized', ...
     'VerticalAlignment', 'top', 'HorizontalAlignment', 'center');

Answer 3

[KL]

title(['Pg.no:' num2str(page) ' sub:' num2str(sub)])

add this next to plot

[Carl Hopkins]

Thank you for your response. Although title works well for labeling an individual axis, but it does not put a header on a page with multiple axes. I would like to have a header or footer on the page that numbers the pages of plots in sequence (as in the figure where I did it manually)

Answer 4

[Sean de Wolski]

You can use the MATLAB Report Generator to build sophisticated reports with whatever formatting, chapters, sections, etc. you need. A trivial example:

import mlreportgen.report.*
import mlreportgen.dom.*
r = Report('figs', 'pdf');
t = Text("Figures:");
t.Style = {Bold, FontSize('24pt')};
add(r, t);
for ii = 1:3
    plot(sin(1:(2^(ii+1))))
    add(r, Figure);    
end

close(r)
% rptview(r)