By: Anne-Marie
July 31 2007 • 3:40 AM
InDesignSecrets Podcast 056
Listen in your browser:
InDesignSecrets-056.mp3 (14.6 MB, 30:54 minutes)
or read the transcript.
- News: Upcoming InDesign Conferences
- Quizzler Answer! (Keep Violations’ highlight color) and Winner
- Hot Button Post of the Week: Why is My File Size So Huge?
- Scaling in InDesign CS3: A Different Kind of Craziness
- Obscure InDesign Feature of the Week: Gap Color
Links mentioned in the Podcast:
Tokyo and Melbourne InDesign Conferences
InDesign Keyboard Shortcuts Poster (for CS2 or CS3)
Listener Comment Line: +1-206-202-6483
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I forced the keep options by setting it up in the running head.
InDesign works the exact same way as my calculator does. In that if 130mm/90% = 117mm then 117*110% = 128.7mm
You can’t argue with the math. It’s completely logical.
Because 90% is 9 / 10. Hence the reciprocal is 10 / 9, which is 111.111% (recurring).
I don’t think it’s doing anything wrong other than calculating what you have inserted for calculations.
Eugene, I didn’t say that ID is doing the math wrong. In fact, I agree that it’s doing it like a calculator would do it. But if I wanted a calculator, I’d use one. Here, I’m using a page-layout application, and it’s really annoying that the plus or minus 1 or 5 percent isn’t based on the original size.
When I press Command-Option-, (comma), I want the object to become 95 percent of its original size. When I press it again, I want it to go to 90 percent. When I press Command-Option-. (period) two times after that, it should return to its original size. This is not just how QX does it, but it’s how normal humans think when scaling objects on a page.
Sorry David, I wasn’t trying to insinuate that your idea in the podcast was not good as regards to the scaling. I understand totally what you are saying about remembering the original size of the image. I couldn’t agree more, because people use the kbsc for scaling a lot and often end up with boxes that don’t line up with the edge. I couldn’t agree more that a reverse scaling on the kbsc should restore it to the original size.
My comment was simply aimed at explaining why InDesign does this as most people who are not mathematically minded would in fact think that a 90% decrease is fixed with a 110% increase. I was simply trying to explain the mathematical logic why it works this way for people that don’t understand why scaling in percentages works this way.
I had a long thread about this in the user forum.
http://www.adobeforums.com/cgi-bin/webx?128@@.3bc46ffa
I finally came up with a script (with help) that scales the objects in INCREMENTS of 1% or 5%.
I also created a set of keyboard shortcuts that changed the original shortcuts to work with my scripts.
You can download the scripts at:
http://vectorbabe.com/scaling.zip
Sandee, this is very interesting! But this script seems to fix TWO problems:
The first one has to do with your original concern: That when you select an image with the Direct Selection tool and use the shortcuts, the percentages compound so you get weird numbers. This script fixes that. Cool.
But these scripts also appear to fix the other problem in CS3: That when you use the shortcuts with the Selection tool, you scale the frame but not the content. These scripts scale BOTH! Yay! Scott Citron will be so happy.
And, as a bonus, if you have Adjust Scaling Percentage chosen in Preferences, you scale the frame and content by even increments of the original size (105%, 110%, 115%, etc.). Unfortunatey, I don’t like having this preference turned on because of what happens to text scaling… the old parentheses come back. But as Anne-Marie pointed out, if you don’t scale images frames mostly (and text frames very infrequently) then this could be the ticket.
Wow! Sandee, you’re not only grep-alicious, you’re a scripter too? I can’t wait to try these out! Thanks so much for posting them.
Hey … in the podcast, when we were talking about scaling, David said one of the new features in CS3 was that if you placed a huge 72 ppi image (like the ones taken with a digital camera in Fine mode), ID CS3 automatically scales them down to a higher res as soon as you place it. You can check it in the Info palette, the Actual ppi says 72 ppi but the Effective ppi says 144 (or higher?).
While David was talking I tried it but couldn’t replicate it … my huge 72 ppi digital camera image came in at 72 ppi, still huge.
Today I think I figured out why … the image I was using for a test was one I had already saved as a .tiff in Photoshop (without changing the res … never opened the Image Size dialog box).
When I located the original .jpg of that file and placed that one, ID CS3 automatically scaled it down, increasing its res to 144 ppi.
So … at first I thought, maybe this only works with .jpgs? But that wasn’t true. I opened the original .jpg in Photoshop and saved it as “version2″, also a .jpg (max quality), without doing anything else.
When I placed both .jpgs, the one that had never been opened in Photoshop came in automatically scaled; the one I had saved as a .jpg again in Photoshop came in huge… InDesign didn’t do anything to it.
If I just *opened* an image in Photoshop and then immediately closed it without doing anything to it (anything requiring a Save); ID CS3 did its scaling thing when placing it.
So … there you go.
When I was doing a book recently with footnotes I would run into the the keep options highlighting every once in a while. Usually with a footnote that was three lines long and only two line fit on the first page, so the third line would be an orphan on the next page.
Dave,
I’m afraid Sandee Cohen beat you to the custom stroke/gap idea. I remember reading in her CS visual quickstart guide that she used to have to create three separate strokes and now (4 years ago) that they added in CS custom strokes she can create the white outline and only have to use one stroke.
Like you David I did it with a text frame. I created a paragraph style with “keep all lines in a paragraph together”, resized the frame so that the paragraph doesn’t fit and voilà the yellow alert appears on the last line of the text frame.
This one was a hard one but the prize required a hard quizzler.
Anne-Marie, perhaps InDesign assumes that if you opened it in Photoshop and resaved that you know what you’re doing and that you really do want a huge 72-dpi image. Interesting. So the moral of the story is, always look at Image Size and change it to a reasonable resolution first.
Fred, oh, I don’t claim any first rights to the callout stroke trick. Sandee or I taught it to the other a long time ago.
Tim Gouder: Congratulations on winning the prize! Thanks for your explanation of how you did it.
Interesting, when viewing my file types this morning to re-associate my tiffs with photoshop (some Senior Head of IT (stick to the caps) changed this on me when I wasn’t here. Anyway, the .jpg format is in twice once as a JPG image and the other is JPG file. I’m sure this has something to do with how indesign interacts with JPGs. If anyone knows anything more on this please do tell.
David, Im with Anne-Marie on scaling/cropping visually. Honestly, I didnt even know that you could scale the image/text box with a kbsc or how to scale images by 1%. Now I know! I never need to get back to 100%.
The only place I would appreciate mathmatical scaling by one point increments is text. Its not the same w/ shift+cmd (,) or (.). It goes up or down two points, which is not helpful. What am I missing here?