How do I Flow Text Around an Image in InDesign

How do I Flow Text Around an Image in InDesign.

When you first get started with Adobe InDesign, a desktop publishing application, the first thing you’ll want to know is to draw text around the image. Using all the different options to wrap (also called wrap) text around an image in InDesign will take your designs to the next level.

Link Text Boxes in Adobe InDesign 2021

We’ll show you several ways to wrap text around the text. First, we’ll wrap the text around a regular rectangular image. Then we’ll dive deeper and show you how to make text flow around an irregularly shaped image outline.

How to Flow Text Around an Image or Graphic

Of all the ways text can wrap around something in InDesign, the simplest is to wrap text around the bounding box or box of the object. Imagine you have a full page of text and you want it to wrap around a single rectangular image in the middle of the page.

Using the Rectangle Frame tool, place a frame over the text frame.
Make sure the rectangular frame is selected and use the Place command (File> Place or Ctrl + D) to place the image in the frame.

Display the Text Wrap palette by choosing Window> Text Wrap or pressing Alt + Ctrl + W to turn on the palette.
With the image frame selected, select the second icon in the top row of the Bounding Box Wrap panel. This will cause the text to wrap around the bounding box of your image .
Try dragging the image to see how it affects the flow of text.

Notice that in the above screenshot, the text is flush against the right side of the image. Let’s give him a chance to breathe. In the second section of the Text Wrap panel, you can enter an offset, which is how you control the space between the object and the text wrap.

If you want the offsets to be the same on all sides of the image, make sure to select the link icon in the middle of the offset options. Then try adjusting the offsets and see how that affects the space between the image and the text that wraps around it.

You will also see the hyphenation options in the Wrap Text panel. Here you can specify which sides the film should affect. Options are right side, left side, right and left side, side to spine, side from the spine, and largest area. Most often, you will need the right and left sides. The screenshot below shows what our example looks like with an offset of 0.125 inches for both the right and left sides.

Ah, now the image on the page has some space around it, making the text easier to read than when the text was flush with the image’s bounding box.

How to wrap text around an irregularly shaped image using Clipping Path

If your image is an irregular cutout, the process of fading text around the edge of the shape is slightly different.

Let’s start in the same way as before, placing the image in a rectangular frame on top of the text frame.

With the image frame selected, choose Object> Clipping Path> Options, or press Ctrl + Alt + Shift + K. The Clipping Path dialog box opens.
From the Type drop-down list, select Photoshop Path or Alpha Channel. In our example, we will select the alpha channel.

If you want the text to appear in empty spaces inside the edges of the image, select the Include Inner Edges check box.
Click OK.
Using the steps above, we have created an outline around the shape of the image . Now let’s wrap some text around this shape. First, open the Text Wrap panel (Window> Text Wrap or Alt + Ctrl + W).
With the image frame selected, click the Object Shape Wrap button in the Text Wrap panel.

The text now wraps around the shape of the object, but it’s still too close to the edges of the object, so let’s adjust the offset.

Make sure the image frame is selected and look at the Wrap Text panel. Note that you can only adjust one of the offset parameters. This is because your image no longer has a right, left, top, or bottom side. This is the wrong shape.

Try adjusting the top offset. This will affect the offset on all sides of your image. Below we used an offset of 0.125 inches. Much better!

Tip for Flowing Text Around an Image Spanning Two Columns

Imagine you’re working with a document that has two columns of text, and you want to wrap the text around an image between the columns. Depending on how the text is aligned, you may find that you need to adjust the offset more on one side of the image than on the other.

In the screenshot below, the text is adjusted to wrap around the center image, and the offset is the same on all sides of the image . Do you see that the text looks closer to the right side of the image than to the left?

To fix this, follow these steps:

Select the image frame and refer to the Text Wrapping panel.
Deselect the offset link button.
You can now adjust the correct offset setting. Increase the right offset until it looks the way you want it.

The main lesson here is that when working with columns, you may have to play around with the text float offset values â€‹â€‹to make the document look good.

Learn More About Adobe InDesign

You now know a couple of different ways to wrap text around an image in InDesign. While you’re at it, check out our articles on how to bind text boxes or use master pages in InDesign.

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