Expert: LizaL - 4/20/2006

Question
I have heard good things about using Adobe Indesign for printing.  I am trying to print cd inserts, dvd covers, posters, flyers, brochures, etc...  My problem is this, i don't know how to make image boxes, where I can just drag an image into the box, and it will automatically resize it to the right dimensions.  Take the cd inserts for example, they are 4 3/4" x 4 3/4", so I should be able to easily fit 6 of them on one 12 x 18 piece of paper, but i don't want to have to manually resize the image to fit each guide box.  I would like to possibly drag the image to the top left box, and it would automatically resize it to that box, as well as fill all other 5 boxes with the same image.  Is this possible, and if so, could you explain a little about the process.  Even if i could get the image to resize auto in the guides, that would be a good start.  I know this isn't the InDesign section, as there wasn't one, but I thought someone of your experince might know a little about this topic.  Thanks in advance for any help you might offer.

Answer
Hi Chip,

Yours is a good question, but unfortunately, as far as I know, InDesign won't automatically resize images, after you've dragged an image into its frame. I think I've seen where you can buy a plug-in that will enable this, but on its own, InDesign doesn't do this.

One thing to note about InDesign is that when you place or drag an image into the program, it already has a frame (or "box"). In other words, you don't have to draw an image box in order to place an image. Once you place it in the program, whether you drag/drop or Place, it automatically has a frame.

I think Quark got us all in the mindset that we need a box before we can place an image, then we place the image into the box and assign a stroke, border color, etc. With InDesign you don't have to do any of that. Since the image automatically has its own box, you can assign stroke width, stroke color, background color, etc., on the fly, using the existing frame as your border.

That said, I do understand what you're saying about needing your images to fit within a 4.75 square box, and not have to resize the boxes. And there are are some things you can do in order to help this along.

You're probably doing this, but make sure your images are the correct size in Photoshop, prior to importing them into InDesign. Since you don't have to draw a picture box in InDesign, if you make sure your image is 4.75 square to begin with, in Photoshop, you can then assign a border, etc., on the fly as mentioned above, when you place the image into InDesign.

Another thing you can do in InDesign is to use the Fitting command to move your image within its boundaries. If you have a 4.75 square box and the image doesn't fit right within that frame and you don't want to go to the trouble of trying to center it manually, use Fitting to move it. Use the Place command (under the File pulldown menu), and place the image in a rectangle frame that you've previously drawn. Then use the options under the Fitting flyout menu to move the object around.

Like this:
http://little-works.com/all_experts/fitting.mov

A couple of other tips:

-- You can hold down the Shift and Command (Mac) or Alt (PC), then grab a corner of your rectangle that contains your image and proportionally resize it.

Like this:
http://little-works.com/all_experts/click_drag.mov

-- If you have a lot of boxes on your page and need them to line up, select them and use the Align function.


Anyway -- your idea is a good one, but InDesign just doesn't offer that. Hope this helps.

Lisa