Creating a space between figure number and label in latex table of figures

A workaround: Use horizontal space in the short caption argument of your figure environment

\caption[\hspace{0.5cm} short caption text]{Long caption text}

This is of course not a too nice solution, though. If you want to avoid it, you would have to fudge the code in your document class, I believe.

You can use tocloft to define the spacing between the figure number and figure caption within the LoF. The length that controls this distance is \cftfignumwidth. Here's a quick example:

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage{tocloft}

\setlength{\cftfignumwidth}{3em}

\begin{document}

\listoffigures

\begin{figure}
  \caption[short caption text]{Long caption text}
\end{figure}

\end{document}

The above suggestion provides a consistent adjustment that can be changed as needed.

Reference:

• List of figures: numbers overlap image caption

• How to modify the space between the numbers and text of sectioning titles in the table of contents?

If you get an error like:

! LaTeX Error: Command \c@lofdepth already defined.
               Or name \end... illegal, see p.192 of the manual.

Try using tocloft from the subfigure package:

\usepackage{subfigure}
\usepackage[subfigure]{tocloft}

\setlength{\cftfignumwidth}{4em}