Turning Polygons to Starbursts in InDesign
Every now and again we hear from someone asking, “Where’s the Starburst tool?” The answer is: Use one of the two Polygon tools (hiding under the frame tools). Normally, when you draw a polygon, you get a boring hexagon. (Well, it’s not boring if you’re a bee, I guess.) To turn it into a dodecahedron or a starburst, you have two choices:
- You can double-click on the Polygon tool to open the Polygon Settings dialog box. There you can choose the number of sides and the star inset. Increasing Star Inset means InDesign adds additional points, insets them, and makes what appears to grocery-shoppers everywhere as a starburst.
- The second option is to hold down the arrow keys on your keyboard while you’re dragging out a frame with the Polygon tool. Up and down arrow keys change the number of points; left and right arrow keys change the inset value.
Note that If you use a Mac, and you’re using CS3 or earlier, you have to actually be dragging with the mouse (it has to be moving) in order for the arrow keys to work. In CS4, they fixed this so that it works like Windows: You can pause, keeping the mouse button down (or trackball button, in my case) and use the arrow keys.
Anne-Marie wrote a blog post a couple years ago about a method of converting one kind of starburst into another — that is, if you already have a 10-sided polygon and you want to change it to a 20-sided polygon. That’s a pretty cool tip, but in CS4, Adobe made it even easier. In what appears to be a completely undocumented feature, you can select one or more polygons on your page, double-click the Polygon tool, and change the settings. When you click OK, all the selected polygons get changed to the new settings. Nifty!
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Very nifty indeed.
I’m just wondering if you wrote this up as a public service or to simply prove that you could use the word dodecahedron in a post. :)
I thought a Dodecahedron was a type of dinosaur?
Maybe it’s only extinct in the vernacular.
:-)
I understood that a dodecahedron is a solid (ie., three-dimensional) figure having twelve pentagonal faces. At least that?s what it says in Dictionary when I select the word and right-click on it.
Perhaps you meant a dodecagon? (I love being a pedant!) :-)
@Perry: I knew that… a long time ago. Obviously that knowledge had fallen out of my brain. Thank you for the correx!
Finaly! It works indeed on selected polygones. in CS3 you could use the pathfinder-trick, but this in CS4 is how users expect it work.
Cheers for that, just what I needed
Thank you! I got exactly what I needed.
I will use this often. Thank you. It would be nice if there was a way to preview your specifications, before changing or perhaps there is and I don’t know about it.
Note that CS5 nullifies this behavior:
https://creativepro.com/cs5s-gridified-tools-adds-a-wrinkle-to-drawing-starbursts-and-polygons.php
Thank you very much for posting this link, Aaron! This feature hasn’t been working lately and I couldn’t figure out why.
Bob Levine’s simple solution worked perfectly:
“After selecting the polygon tool and dragging with your mouse, just PRESS THE SPACEBAR to toggle the arrow key behavior.”
Thats a pentagon you 1/2 wit!