While trying to compose some kind of "wanted poster" (*Steckbrief*), I could not get rid of the vertical spacing LaTeX automatically introduces! Here's an MWE, which should work on Linux/Mac OS with `--shell-escape` enabled, though I needed to run it twice. I chose this variant since I didn't want to, and even couldn't upload personal photos.

```
% arara: pdflatex: {shell: yes}
% arara: pdflatex: {synctex: yes}

%% MWE to show a problem with pictures and text in tabu
\documentclass[paper=a4, oneside, fontsize=12pt]{scrartcl}

\usepackage[utf8]{inputenx}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage{textcomp}
\usepackage[ngerman, english]{babel}
\parindent3mm

%% page geometry
\usepackage[a4paper, left=30mm, right=30mm,
 top=25mm, bottom=30mm]{geometry}

%% Selection of the fonts
\usepackage{bookman}
\usepackage[final]{microtype}
\overfullrule=1mm

%% to get 1.5 line spacing (Actually 1.25)
\usepackage{setspace}
\onehalfspacing
\setlength{\parindent}{5mm}

%% For the tables!
\usepackage{tabu, longtable, booktabs}
%\usepackage{multirow}
\usepackage{graphicx}

\begin{document}

\title{MWE to show a problem with pictures and text in tabu}
\author{rotton}
\date{\today}

\maketitle

%% load the pictures from the web, if necessary
\IfFileExists{./DonEK.jpg}
{}
{
    \write18{wget -O ./DonEK.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/4f/KnuthAtOpenContentAlliance.jpg/406px-KnuthAtOpenContentAlliance.jpg?download}
}
\IfFileExists{./LeslieL.jpg}
{}
{
    \write18{wget -O ./LeslieL.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/50/Leslie_Lamport.jpg/377px-Leslie_Lamport.jpg?download}
}

%% Construction of the table itself
\tabulinesep=2pt
\extrarowsep=2pt
\begin{tabu}{X[c] X[2,l] X[2,l]}  %% 3 columns, width ratio 1:2:2
\toprule
\includegraphics[width=0.16\textwidth]{DonEK} Donald E. Knuth &
%\vspace{-6em}
\underline{Deutsch}
\begin{itemize}
\item Erfinder \textit{(und etwas mehr Text)}
\item von
\item \TeX
\end{itemize} &
\underline{English}
\begin{itemize}
\item Inventor \textit{(and some more text)}
\item of
\item \TeX
\end{itemize} \\
\midrule
\includegraphics[width=0.16\textwidth]{LeslieL} Leslie Lamport &
\underline{Deutsch}
\begin{itemize}
\item veröffentlichte Makros und Hilfsprogramme zum einfachen Umgang mit \TeX
\item ==> \LaTeX
\end{itemize} &
\underline{English}
\begin{itemize}
\item published macros and auxiliary programs for easy handling of \TeX
\item ==> \LaTeX
\end{itemize} \\
\bottomrule
\end{tabu}

\end{document}

```

The output looks like this:
[![The red arrows (added manually) highlight the vertical space which I want to get rid of](https://i.stack.imgur.com/GOnl0.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/GOnl0.png)

As you can see, there's a large vertical offset between the text in the second and third column, compared to the photos. I manually added some red arrows to highlight this. How to get rid of that space? I know I can manually introduce a negative vertical space (line 58, commented out), but that seems very unTeXnical to me!
(An alternative would be to use TikZ, but that's really another story.)