Introduction

In terms of how pictures behave in the document, there are two key types of pictures: inline pictures and floating pictures.

By default, pictures in Atlantis are inline. They behave as if they are just ordinary letters of text. When an inline picture is inserted to a paragraph, the paragraph line's height gets automatically adjusted to accommodate the picture:

Inline pictures automatically move with the surrounding text as text is added or removed.

Unlike inline pictures that can appear only at certain locations within the host paragraph, floating pictures can be positioned nearly anywhere on the page. Floating pictures can be placed in front of or behind document text. They can also have text wrapping around:

A floating picture is always anchored to one of the document's paragraphs. When you select a floating picture, the anchor icon is displayed next to the paragraph to which this picture is anchored:

The floating picture always appears on the same page as its anchor. You can move the picture's anchor with the mouse in order to anchor the picture to another paragraph.

Wrapping styles

When there are pictures selected in the document, Atlantis displays the "Picture" context toolbar:

You can use the "Picture layout" button of that toolbar to convert the selected pictures from the inline type to the floating type, and vise versa, or choose how text wraps around the selected floating pictures:

In Atlantis, there are six wrapping styles of floating pictures:

• With the Square wrapping style, the most common one, the text wraps around a rectangular box enclosing the picture:
  
• The Tight and Through wrapping styles act pretty much the same. Both are normally used on bigger pictures that have blank areas around them. Under these wrapping styles, the document text may display over those blank areas. The only difference between these styles is that the document text under the Tight style does not fill in the gaps in the middle of the picture:
  
  while the Through style can be used to fill in the blank areas between the elements in the middle of the picture. As a result, the paragraph lines might be divided into three or more fragments:
  
  Under the Tight and Through wrapping styles, you can control how text wraps around the picture by specifying the so called wrap points. When you apply the Tight or Through wrapping style to a picture with white background, Atlantis automatically computes wrap points for the picture. But you can manually specify wrap points for any picture.
• The Top and bottom wrapping style means that the text will stay above and below the picture with no wrapping on the sides:
  
• The Behind text and In front of text styles mean no actual wrapping. The picture displays either behind text:
  
  or in front of text:
  

Adding pictures

When a picture is stored on your disk as a graphic file, the simplest way to insert it to your document is through the Insert | Picture... menu command of Atlantis, or by clicking the Insert picture button of the Insert toolbar . You can also grab this graphic file in the file manager, drag over the Atlantis window, and drop to the desired location in the document.

If you already inserted the required picture to your document in the past, you could use the drop-down menu of the Insert picture toolbar button to insert a graphic file from the history list:

The alternative way to add a picture is through the Windows clipboard. If you can place the picture onto the clipboard through any other application (for example, through your graphic software), you could easily paste this picture into your document in Atlantis.

Once inserted to a document, pictures can be deleted, copied, moved etc in the same way as ordinary text.

Selecting pictures

Before performing any action on a picture, it has to be selected first. Individual pictures can be selected with a mouse click. Normally, when a picture is selected, Atlantis displays the picture's boundary box and the resize spots:

To select multiple pictures, press and hold the Ctrl key after selecting the first picture, then click additional pictures.

Pictures can be selected on their own. But the selection can also include a mix of text and pictures. On the image below, the selection contains a text fragment including an inline picture:

Floating pictures can also be included in a selection containing text. To do so, after selecting a text fragment, press and hold the Ctrl key, then click the desired pictures. On the image below, the selection includes a text fragment plus a floating picture:

Floating pictures can also be included in the selection in another way. On the image below, the selected floating picture is anchored to the first paragraph:

If you entirely select the first paragraph (including its paragraph end mark), the floating picture anchored to that paragraph would also be selected:

When the selection includes multiple pictures, the "Picture" context toolbar reports how many pictures are contained by the selection:

In such cases, any picture-related command applies to all the selected pictures.

Positioning pictures

Both inline and floating pictures can be moved to a new location in the document with a simple drag & drop. While inline pictures can be placed only at certain locations (character positions) within a paragraph, floating pictures can be placed nearly anywhere on the page. As already said, a floating picture always appears on the same page as the paragraph to which this picture is anchored. But there is another important thing to remember about floating pictures. The picture's position can be either fixed on the page, or the picture can move with the text to which it is anchored. You can switch to the required position type through the corresponding commands of the menu displayed with a click on the Picture layout button of the "Picture" context toolbar:

The same menu of the Picture layout button offers nine predefined picture positions:

Each of these nine options applies the Square wrapping style, the fixed position on page, and a certain alignment relative to the page margins.

The Picture dialog

While all common actions on pictures (like moving, resizing, deleting, etc) can be performed directly in the document window or through the commands of the "Picture" context toolbar, the less common options are offered only through the "Picture" dialog. You can open this dialog by choosing the "More Options..." command at the bottom of the menu displayed when you click the Picture layout button of the "Picture" context toolbar:

Alternatively, you can open the "Picture" dialog by simply double-clicking a picture in the document.

On the "Text Wrapping" tab of the dialog:

besides the wrapping style itself, you can specify on which sides of a picture text wraps around. You can choose to wrap text on both sides, to the left only, to the right only, or wherever is located the largest distance between the picture and the page margin:

On this tab, you can also specify the required distance between the text and the picture:

The "Position" tab allows to place a floating image with a certain align or absolute offset relative to various items of the page:

Finally, the "Size" tab of the dialog can be used to change the picture's size:

The picture's size can be specified in two ways:

1. Specify picture size expressed in the current measurement units (for example, in inches) as it should appear on printed paper. For example, if you want your picture to be 3" on width and 2" on height printed on paper, specify 3 and 2 in the topmost "Width" and "Height" boxes correspondingly.
2. Specify the scaling factor that should be applied to the original dimensions of your picture. Use the bottommost "Width" and "Height" boxes.

When the Lock aspect ratio option is checked, the original proportions are automatically kept when you change the picture width or height. In other words, you only need to specify a new width or height for the picture. Specify a new width, and the height will be adjusted proportionally. And vice versa.
When this option is on for a selected picture, and you use the mouse to resize the picture in the document window, the original width to height ratio will be kept if you grab and drag any of the four resizing handles on the picture corners. If instead you use any of the four resizing handles on the picture sides, the original width to height ratio will not be kept. You will be able to resize the window to new proportions.

The Zoom to fit page option is available for inline pictures only. When it is checked, the picture will be displayed "zoomed to fit page" both in the document window of Atlantis, and when viewed as EPUB file in the eReaders.

Supported graphic formats

You can insert (import) pictures of the following graphc formats to your Atlantis documents:

• Bitmap (.bmp)
• Metafile (.wmf, .emf)
• JPEG
• GIF
• PNG
• SVG

Atlantis currently uses Direct2D to render vector graphics. The SVG support in Atlantis is available under Windows 10 (and higher).

Any picture from your document can be saved (exported) to a graphic file of any of the supported graphic formats. For this, select one or multiple pictures in your document, then use the Save picture as... command of the "Picture" context toolbar. Note that exporting as SVG is possible only when all selected pictures are SVGs. Atlantis will ask you to give a name to the first picture. If you include a numbering text at the end of the first filename:

Atlantis will use this name for the first selected picture, then will save all the other pictures (if any) under the same filename but with incremented numbers: "Cat 2.png", "Cat 3.png", and so on.

Tips:

• Floating pictures selected on their own (when no text selected in the document) can be repositioned on the page with the cursor keys (Left Arrow, Right Arrow, Up Arrow, and Down Arrow). Pressing the cursor keys while holding the Shift key pressed will resize the selected floating pictures.
• Big document files can be a problem if you want to send them over the Internet or save them as eBook. Quite often document files are big simply because they include rich-color pictures. Accordingly, one of the most straightforward way to get lighter documents is to reduce the color depth of the pictures they contain. You can "lighten" pictures directly in Atlantis. Just select the desired pictures, and use the Reduce picture quality button of the "Picture" context toolbar.
• You can cycle through the document's floating pictures with the keyboard. Just click one of the floating pictures, then keep pressing Tab or ShiftTab.

See also...