October 30 2009 • 9:58 AM
InDesignSecrets Videocast #8: Placing Images
InDesign CS4 has several very helpful (but not immediately obvious) features for placing images, including proportional place and “contact sheet” or grid place. Take a moment to learn these features, and you can save a lot of time importing images in the future!
You can watch the videocast by clicking on the video below, or — if you want a larger version of it — go directly to our channel at indesignsecrets.blip.tv. These videos are also available on Adobe.tv (though it usually takes a few weeks for each episode to be posted there). Alternatively, you can watch (or even subscribe) to the video podcast on iTunes with this link.
Comments? Special features you’d like us to cover? Please chime in below!
Anne-Marie said: “…fits the image to the frame rather than fills the image to the frame…”. As we can see it requires a second step to FILL the frames proportionally.
You can make that into a one-step procedure if you define an object style in advance: when no document is open, just define a new one with the “Fill frame proportionally” option. Select that object style (maybe restart InDesign) to make it your default object style. From now on every time you place an image it will be placed with “fill frame proportionally” even when using the “grid-arrangement (or-whatever-it’s-called-officially)”-command.
Uwe, unfortunately images that you Place come in with [None] Object Style, so they ignore any named Object Style, the default ones or the custom ones. The default [Basic Graphic Frame] object style is for Unassigned content frames, like simple shapes with no content.
What we NEED is a [Basic Image Frame] object style, that way we can swap it out for a custom default object style as you suggest.
BUT while David and I were doing a runthrough before recording this episode, he said that Michael Ninness knew of a trick, sort of like an easter egg, that would result in what you describe. We tried it but didn’t have time to test it thoroughly or include it in the video.
I don’t recall it exactly (hoping David can jump in, he knows it) but it has to do with the *name* of the object style. If you give the object style a specific name, something like “filled frame proportional,” then magically you can get contact sheet placing to automatically fill the frames instead of fit the frames.
Just got wifi working in my hotel room in Moscow… yipee! Yes, Anne-Marie, as you noted there is a way to do with this with a special object style. I wrote it up here.
However, I was having some significant problems with it. Notably, when I used this with the grid/contact sheet Place feature, it sometimes crashed InDesign! There is some kinds of icky badness in the two features working together. Drat.
Anne-Marie: Hm. What should I say. What I described is working really well for me. Tested this before I wrote about it.
What is important: no document should be opened at the time you define the object style, select it to make it default, restart InDesign. AND the style should be based on [None].
Sent you an IDML file to test for yourself. B.t.w this trick does NOT work with InDesign CS3.
David: no crashes so far when using my new default object style while placing images in grids. And, as far as I recall, no special name was required to create that style.
@Uwe: Thank you for sending me that file. I think I see how you solved the problem. It has nothing to do with the object style you made. I think the key to the puzzle is that you simply deselected all objects on the page (or closed all documents) and then chose Object > Fitting > Fill Frame Proportionally. That does change the default for all images you place. Very good point; I should have thought of that.
However, it actually does it by adding “local” object formatting over the None object formatting style. It does not apply an object style. That is, after I place the images and select them on the page, the object style panel still lists them as “None+” (not the object style you made). But you are correct that doing this while no docs are open or no objects selected is a good way to force InDesign to fill the frames!
@David: thank you for clarifying that. One of the features, or should I say corrected bugs, that Adobe improved with InDesign CS4.
Hi folks,
I have to place a lot of large photos in magazine spreads and as the spreads change from hour to hour the photos are constantly resized (made smaller, usually) within indesign by scaling x and y as a percentage (usually 75%, then another 50%)
Every now and then a layout doesn’t work so I need to quickly resize one or more photos back to their original sizes as they were when first imported . I tend to do this by deleting the photo that’s been rezised/shrunk previously then reimporting the original pic – is there a quicker way?
Sometimes I can keep copies of a few photos on the paste board and work in the document with copies of these, reverting back to the paste board pics hen necessary but this isn’t always practical if the spread has a lot of photos.
I guess what I’m looking for is some kind of: “undo all image rezising ever done to this picture since it was first placed” button!
@Dan — Yes, there is an easy way to “undo all image resizing ever done to this picture since it was first placed”. Ch0ose Object > Fitting > Undo All Image Resizing Ever Done To This Picture Since It Was First Placed.
Ok, sorry, couldn’t resist. Here’s the real way to do it:
1. Press A to select the Direct Selection Tool. Click on the frame that contains the image you want to reset with the Direct Select tool to actually select the image and not its frame. Hold down the Shift key and click on other frames if you want to reset more than one image.
2. Choose Object > Transform > Clear Transformations.
It is also available in the Context Menu, and, if it is something you need to do a lot, I suggest you assign it a keyboard shortcut.
Cheers,
m.
Cool! Thanks Michael.
Michael, thanks! Undo Transforms, it’s very useful and new to me.
Except . . . we have to manually Shift-select all the images — and we can’t do this across several pages. So it’s very cumbersome to undo image Transforms for large documents.
And also, if some image will be un-Transformed in such a way that it would become larger than the Pasteboard — the whole operation fails, and we must backtrack to unselect the suspected too-big images. More cumbersomeness.
Big Wish for CS5: “Undo All Image Transforms and Screw the Pasteboard Limit”.
Hi,
This Grid-Function dos not work completly in CS5. Yes the making a Grid-Function is still there but not the gusset-change function, or is there a new hidden shortcut I just don’t know.
The postchange-Function in CS5 is a mess because, you have to use the mouse and spacebar to ajust and you will not get different gussets perfectly the same width.
In the CS4 you had the good feature by arrowkeys to ajust.
If someone has a good answer please mail me or post here.
@Andreas: The grid function works in two different ways in CS5. You can cmd-shift-drag (the way it worked in CS4). Or — here’s the new part — you can just press the arrow keys while you’re dragging to adjust the number of rows and columns. To adjust the space between the objects (in English it is “gutter,” not “gusset”) hold down the Command/Ctrl key while pressing the arrows.