I have been looking at various options for controlling how figures are placed on a page and based on answers to similar questions in this mailing list I tried various options. The most flexible one seems to be using tables e.g. \setupexternalfigures[location={default}] \starttext \placefigure[]{}{\externalfigure[hacker][height=1in]} \startxtable[frame=off,align=low] \startxrow \startxcell[ny=2] \placefigure[force][]{left twoup}{\externalfigure[mill][height=4in]} \stopxcell \startxcell \placefigure[force][]{the first}{\externalfigure[spider][height=1.5in]} \stopxcell \stopxrow \startxrow \startxcell \placefigure[force][]{the second}{\externalfigure[cow][height=1.5in]} \stopxcell \stopxrow \stopxtable It seems to work well except that figure numbers are being skipped. In this example hacker=1 mill=8, spider=9 and cow=10. Varying the contents of the table reveals that It is skipping two times the number of figures in the table. Is this an invalid combination of features I’m using or am I doing something wrong?