Fit content to frame, while maintaining one original frame edge location

Thanks for the speedy reply, David!

(For all reading, I’m on a Mac, by the way, in regards to my keyboard shortcuts below)

Ok that is pretty helpful. I think that takes me 90% of the way, and what you explained works…mostly. Here is an example of what is hanging me up.

My empty frames are all sized at 40mm wide x 60mm tall, which is generally a good average aspect ratio for most of our book covers.

When I place a book cover that has a *wider* aspect ratio than the empty frame, this works great: it takes up the entire width of the empty frame (part of my desired end result, which I forgot to explain in my original post…I need the width to remain constant so all my frames are visually the same distance apart from one another in a grid-like fashion), and it leaves some unfilled space towards the top edge of my frame…so that when I hit “fit frame to content”, the top edge of the frame snaps down to fit snuggly against the top of my content). This is great!

But when I place a book cover that has a *narrower* aspect ratio than the empty frame, the book fits itself snuggly height-wise within the top/bottom bounds of my empty frame, and leaves some unfilled space towards the right edge of my frame. This is undesirable, as I described in the last paragraph, that I need the top edge of my frames to be the variable in this equation, and to always have the bottom edge stay in place, while also filling the frames entire width, while making the height be the variable.

I did play around a bit, and I altered your suggestion to have the “Fitting” dropdown say “Fill Frame Proportionately”, and that seems to catch more of my desired fittings than your original suggestion, but then what happens is that the *wider* aspect-ratio-covers are filling up to be *too wide*…

I see that I might be asking for too much—that I need to pick a priority for my covers and manually manipulate the ones that aren’t filled the way I want, and just be happy with the majority of covers filling my frames correctly.

I imagine that, if that’s the case…that if I pick the latter option (using “Fit Frame Proportionately”), then I’ll have to insert a step into your suggested solution:

David’s Steps:
1) Select all frames
2) Create Object Style with Frame Fitting Options
(in this case, we’ll use *my* settings for “Content Fitting” dropdown)
3) Place all images into frames

Insert my new step:
4) Select only the frames that have a *wider* aspect-ratio image and execute “Fit Content Proportionally” (opt + shift + cmd + E) so that it takes up the width of the frame and leaves some blank space at the top. Now, in regards to a content-to-frame relationship, these wider ones are placed just like all the others.

Back to David’s:
5) Keep all selected, then execute “Fit Frame to Content” (opt + cmd + C)

Now with that completed, my catalog images are all unified…meaning the bottom edges are aligned, the widths are the same as one another, and the tops are fluctuating in height.

If there’s a setting that I can alter within Frame Fitting Options so that *no matter what ratio image* goes into my frames, it does what I’m trying to do automatically, please let me know! In regards to that idea, I noticed in your screen shot that the “Auto-Fit” box is unchecked. Can you tell me a bit more about what that’s for and why you left it blank?

Thanks SO much David. I just wanted to explain this all out in hopes of being more clear. It also seems to not let me upload images as a basic user on the forums so I haven’t uploaded any screenshots of my own. If I’m able somehow, and if that would be helpful, please let me know (though some of the specific of my work I need to keep confidential).