How to Use Subject Aware Text Wrap in Adobe InDesign

Applying text wraps to images with backgrounds in Adobe InDesign has always required a little help from Photoshop.

Whether it's cutting out subjects, creating Alpha Channels or paths, there has always been some prep work in Photoshop before applying the wrap in InDesign.

Until now.

Follow along in this tutorial and learn how to use Select Subject Text Wrap – an AI-powered tool in InDesign – to seamlessly apply a text wrap while maintaining the background in the image.

No other apps, no tedious prep work.

Before getting started, you can download the InDesign doc and main image for this tutorial to follow along.

Tutorial Lesson Files.zip

Download ZIP • 6.09MB

Open the Begin InDesign document in the lesson files folder. The first step is placing the main image, which in this case is a panda bear chewing on some bamboo shoots.

• Click the main frame in the layout, which is serving as the background image.

• Go to File > Place and choose the image that's included with the lesson files.

• Click Open to place the image into the frame.

To access the Text Wrap panel, make your way up to Window > Text Wrap.

• With the frame selected, open the Text Wrap panel and choose Wrap around object shape. The text surrounding the subject will disappear.

• To address this, click the Type dropdown under the Contour Options and change the setting from Same as Clipping to Select Subject.

• Next, set your text wrap offset. This will vary based on your image, but in this case, a value of 22 to 24 pixels works great.

Here's a look at how the text wrap will appear using the settings explained above.

There will be times where you have text frames in a layout that overlap or are close to the image with the text wrap. This will result in the wrap knocking over text and causing overset text.

To get around this, hold Option on a Mac, Alt on Windows and double-click the frame in question. In this case, I'll double-click the subheading in the layout.

That will bring up the Text Frame Options where you can select the Ignore Text Wrap option.

Here is how to turn on the Ignore Text Wrap feature based on the steps explained above.