linked image does not take on the class of the inner image and its justification

[shamai]

if you put an image in the wordpress editor and press justify left
the image is justified left with a class of "alignleft"

However if you now link the image the outer anchor DOES NOT get the class alignleft. and the image won't align left unless the anchor is set to inline.
what if its not?

For stylistic purposes this is bad. The anchor should float left NOT the image. Otherwise the anchor collapses and is not easily styllable.

there are some stuff you can't do to an image like add pseudo elements. and if the anchor doesn't have the "align left" its annoying and difficult to work with.

the link should get the alignleft class. It creates more flexibility for us theme developers.

[iseulde]

I think I agree, but I'm not sure if we can do this in a backward compatible way. Currently themes would expect to find the class on the image.

[shamai]

so put the class on both. or some sort of class on the link so we can handle it easily.

a.alignleft img.alignleft{ float: none; }

[azaozz]

The align* classes are not added to the <a> element in the image block either. If this is still needed, better to open an issue on GH: ​https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg.

[azaozz]

Moving to the "Editor" component for consideration in the block editor. Hot sure how it would work on the front-end when having several nested elements with aligh* classes, but worth exploring.

[pento]

As @iseulde mentioned, I don't think this can be changed in either the classic editor, or the block editor, in a backward compatible way.

If you're interested in exploring how it could be done, I'd encourage you to open an issue or pull request over on the ​Gutenberg repository, to see if it's possible.