Summary

After you import a picture into an InDesign document, you can use the Text Wrap pane to control how text flows when the picture is in front of a text frame. You can also use this to have one text frame wrap around another, though that is not common.

To mask out certain areas of a picture, you can use a picture's built-in clipping path (if it has one), edit the text-wrap boundary, place the picture in a free-form shape created with the Pen tool, or use the Clipping Path command to have InDesign build a clipping path .

InDesign offers sophisticated transparency tools to let items blend together, create ghost effects, and translucent items, and other such effects. Plus it offers tools to create sophisticated drop shadows and feathered edges, as well as fancy corners.

If you want to get even trickier with your imported pictures, you can place them in complex shapes created with the Compound Path command, paste them into a text thread so that they move along with the surrounding text, or slice them into two pieces with the Scissors tool.