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Adobe InDesign CC - Essential Training

How do I get text to move around an image or shape using text wrap

Daniel Walter Scott

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Introduction



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Hi there, in this video we're going to look at Text Wrap. And that means, this red rectangle in the background has a little bit of space around it, and it pushes the text around. Same thing with this cool little image here, when it moves, you can see the text is like a little invisible force field around it. So let's go and learn how to do that in InDesign.

So first thing is, we're going to put it on page 7 here. We're going to do two things, we'll do it with just a plain rectangle first, and then we'll do it with an image. So let's grab the rectangle tool. And let's draw a rectangle in the center here. I'm going to give it a 'Fill' of 'Green at Heart Red'. And what I'd like to do is put some text in, and I kind of like this factoid up here where it's just a nice text pulled out, interesting text piece. You see, at the moment this object doesn't do anything to the text underneath it. I'm going to put it in the middle there. We're going to make the text Run Around. It's either called Run Around or Text Wrap, depending on your industry. By default it's off.

What we're going to do is Run Around this third option. So it's going to Run Around the edges of this object. Now it is running around, can you see? If I move the text, it's all pushing the text around, which is cool. But it's butting up right to the edge. What we can do is increase it a little bit. You see this little invisible border coming out from the edges. That will allow us to have a box, and keep the text away from the edges. Now, that works great for an object. Let's look at doing it like we had-- actually let's put him over this side. And we'll do our image on this side. It's just an extra step to do.

So let's go to 'File', 'Place'. What we're using here is this 'Adobe Stock Preview'. Adobe Stock is a paid site. This image in particular is not paid. So I'm going to shrink it down to a more appropriate size. So if we wanted to use this, let's say we're just mocking it up for a client, once they approve it, you can go and pay for the image, but at the moment we got this preview version, which means it's free. But it's got this watermark we can't get rid of.

So what I'd like to do is, with this selected, I'm going to flip it over. So with it selected with the 'Black Arrow', there's this option at the top here, 'Flip Horizontal'. So here it slips to the other side of the page, not cool. I'm going to have it somewhere down here. Now if we do this same thing we just did for that red box, watch this, I go to that option here, and it is working, and pushing the text away. I move it around-- oops. Don't click the center of it, so grab you, move it around. It's pushing the text around, but it's not quite what we want. We want it to wrap around the edges of this. And this technique will only work if it's on a white background. So if you've got an image, it's got a big colored background image here, it's not going to work. So, white background is easy.

What we need to do is, this option here where it says 'Contour Options', if yours doesn't have that you might have to double click this thumb nail here. Or there's an option here that says 'Show Options'. Down the bottom, there's one that says 'Same as Clipping'. Click this one that says 'Detect Edges'. And because it's on a white background it's able to do that. Now let's put Text Wrap around the edges here. And it is working, but the problem is that this image is on top of the text--

It is actually working, I just need to move it behind this text, because this guy is still at the front so I'm going to click on him with the 'Black Arrow', right click him, and I'm going to say 'Arrange', 'Send to Back'. You can see, now it's wrapping around the edges, so it's not covering it.

One of the problems, just like we had with this guy is that it's too close. Exact same principle, I can increase this. Little bit of an invisible border appearing around it. That looks kind of cool. 'W', 'W'. So that's Text Wrap. One of the things we're going to run into is when we start adding text to the top of this, it's going to try and push out as well. So we'll do that in the next video. I'll see you over there.