Vertical alignment of side-by-side minipages

Question

I want to create some text, which will be positioned on the left-hand side of an image. My Latex code is:

\begin{minipage}{.6\linewidth}
\lipsum[1]
\end{minipage}
\hspace{0.02\linewidth}
\begin{minipage}{.3\linewidth}
\includegraphics[width=\linewidth]{test.png}
\end{minipage}

This gives me the following output:

However, I want the top of the text to be aligned with the top of the picture. Therefore, I tried using the [t] argument with the minipage:

\begin{minipage}[t]{.6\linewidth}
\lipsum[1]
\end{minipage}
\hspace{0.02\linewidth}
\begin{minipage}[t]{.3\linewidth}
\includegraphics[width=\linewidth]{test.png}
\end{minipage}

However, this gave the following output:

What do I need to do to get my desired vertical alignment?

Answer 1

The reason is that the [t] means align the minipage with the first (top) baseline. The baseline for the image is under the image, which is perfectly aligned with the first baseline of the text. I see two ways to fix it.

Add a row before and remove the vertical space.

\begin{minipage}[t]{.6\linewidth}
  \lipsum[1]
\end{minipage}
\hspace{0.02\linewidth}
\begin{minipage}[t]{.3\linewidth}
  \strut\vspace*{-\baselineskip}\newline\includegraphics[width=\linewidth]{example-image}
\end{minipage}

Lower the image with all but one row.

\begin{minipage}[t]{.6\linewidth}
  \lipsum[1]
\end{minipage}
\hspace{0.02\linewidth}
\begin{minipage}[t]{.3\linewidth}
  \raisebox{-\height+0.7\baselineskip}{\includegraphics[width=\linewidth]{example-image}}
\end{minipage}

Both gives:

Answer 2

You don't really need the minipage around the image

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{lipsum}
\usepackage[export]{adjustbox}
\usepackage{graphicx}
\begin{document}

\begin{minipage}[t]{.6\linewidth}
\lipsum[1]
\end{minipage}\hfill
\includegraphics[width=.3\linewidth,valign=t]{example-image}
\end{document}

---

If you do want to put two minipages on a line it is best not to use approximates spacing such as

\begin{minipage}{.6\linewidth}
\lipsum[1]
\end{minipage}
\hspace{0.02\linewidth}
\begin{minipage}{.3\linewidth}

which puts boxes of width .9\textwidth with a \parindent to the left and one word space, a space of width 0.02\linewidth and then another word space between the boxes. This may or may not total one \textwidth just depending on the stretch and shrink of the two word spaces. It is better to use

\end{minipage}\hfill
\begin{minipage}

as then there is just a single stretchy space between the two boxes.