Wrapping text around pictures in Layout by Zaweba

Text wrap decides how text behaves when it meets a picture or shape. Without it, text runs straight under or over the picture. With it, text moves out of the way, around the box, around the shape of the subject, or past it entirely. Layout by Zaweba sets this in the Text wrap panel.

The ways to wrap

Bounding box wraps text around the rectangle of the frame. It's the plain, tidy choice for most photos and boxes in columns of text.

Contour wraps around the shape of the content. The contour can come from detected edges, from an alpha channel in the picture, or from a path. A cut-out product photo or a portrait on a plain background can have text hugging its outline, which gives a lively, magazine look.

Jump object stops text at the top of the object and carries on below it, leaving the space beside the object empty. It's right for a picture across part of a column where text beside it would make lines too short to read.

Jump to next column sends the text after the object straight to the next column.

Invert puts text inside the shape rather than outside it.

Offsets per side

Offsets set how far text keeps from the object, separately on each side. A photo on the left of a column might need space on its right and below but not on the left, where it meets the margin. Setting offsets per side gives even, deliberate gaps.

Making wrap look good

Give enough offset. Text pressed against a picture looks crowded; a little space reads much better.

Watch for very short lines. Wrapping a column around a wide picture can leave a word or two per line beside it. If that happens, jump object is usually better.

Contour wrap needs a clean edge. Detected edges work best on a picture with a plain background; an alpha channel gives the most accurate result when the picture has one; drawing a path is the fallback for complex pictures.

Decide on the wrap for a whole type of picture rather than one at a time. If every photo in a magazine's news pages should wrap by bounding box with the same offsets, set that once in an object style and apply it, so the pages look consistent and changes are made in one place.

Justified text around a contour can leave uneven gaps between words. Left aligned text often looks better around irregular shapes.

Text wrap slips

Captions that disappear are a classic: the caption is in a text frame next to a picture with wrap, and gets pushed out. Text frame options include ignore wrap, which keeps such a caption in place.

Setting wrap on the wrong object is another: the wrap belongs on the picture or shape the text should avoid, not on the text frame itself.

Text wrap works with anchored objects, layers and text frame options in Layout by Zaweba, and getting it right is a large part of what makes text and pictures look designed together.