Auto and Title framing — how the tool avoids cutting your title

The most common thing that goes wrong with A+ images is a crop that slices a title in half. Two buttons exist to prevent it.

Auto

Auto picks the largest frame that misses your title, your byline and any other layer completely. It starts as wide as the module allows and only tightens if nothing at that size can clear the lettering — a title running the full width of the cover leaves no full-width band, so the frame has to come in from the sides first.

Among all the crops that work, it picks the one with the most going on in it, so you get a piece of the artwork rather than an empty patch of sky.

Title

Title does the opposite on purpose: it frames your title block whole, with a little space around it, as tight as the module's shape allows. It is often the best single image in an A+ section — your typography, at the size it was designed to be read at, surrounded by your own artwork.

Why they sometimes are not there

Both buttons need to know where your lettering is. They can only know that if your title is a layer you added in the cover editor — a text layer, or an image layer such as a transparent PNG of hand-lettered type.

If your title is painted into the artwork file you uploaded, it is just pixels to us, indistinguishable from the picture behind it. Rather than guess and get it wrong, we hide both buttons and leave the framing to you. The dashed outlines on the small thumbnail show you exactly what the tool can see.

In that situation, use the zoom and drag controls in Framing the picture, and check the line under the buttons — it will not claim a frame is clear of a title it cannot see.

The warning

Whatever you choose, if a frame cuts through a layer the line under the buttons says so in amber. A frame that holds your title whole is fine and is not flagged.