includegraphics, space after picture in multicol environment

Question

I try to place pictures within the columns of a mulicol environment. The look should be register-true (even if there is no support for that in latex), i.e. all lines should be at same height across the columns. When I place pictures with includegraphics, sometimes it messes up the position of the lines after the picture. The pictures have unfortunately different sizes and I do adjust them to fit the column width.

Before and after the picture there should be some space. I try with vfill, vspace, etc. but I can't figure out what causes latex to change or not change the positions of the line. All I want is that the position of the lines after the includegraphics is same as all other columns.

MWE:

\documentclass[9pt,twoside]{extreport}
\usepackage{etex}
\usepackage[papersize={32cm,47cm }]{geometry}
% \usepackage{graphicx}
\usepackage{lipsum}
\usepackage[demo]{graphicx}

%\usepackage{color}
\usepackage{microtype}
\usepackage{multicol}

\usepackage{multicol}
\newlength{\mybottom}
\setlength{\mybottom}{60pt}
\newlength{\myleft}
\setlength{\myleft}{50pt}

\parskip=0pt 
\parindent=12pt

\geometry{
top=80pt,
bottom=\mybottom,
left=\myleft,
right=30pt
}

\newcommand{\floatpic}[1]{
\noindent\rule{\linewidth}{#1}
}

\begin{document}
\begin{multicols}{5}

\lipsum
\lipsum

\floatpic{2.1cm}

\lipsum
\floatpic{4.3cm}
\lipsum
\floatpic{4.3cm}

\lipsum
\lipsum

\end{multicols}
\newpage


\end{document}

Answer 1

A combination of \par and \medskip (or the combining command \medskip) will give you, what you want. You can define an environment for that as shown in this nice answer.

% arara: pdflatex

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{blindtext} % for dummy text
\usepackage{multicol}
\usepackage{microtype} % for nice typesetting in narrow columns
\usepackage[demo]{graphicx}
\usepackage{caption} % for \captionof

\begin{document}
    \begin{multicols}{3}
        \blindtext
        %
        \medbreak\noindent\minipage{\columnwidth}
            %\centering % if smaller than \columnwidth
            \includegraphics[width=\columnwidth]{abc}
            %\captionof{figure}{some caption} % optional
        \endminipage\medbreak % might require \bigbreak if caption is too short
        %
        \blindtext
    \end{multicols}
\end{document}