Fan of creative technology, elearning, instructional design and a little geeky

Scaling and resizing images

April 18, 2003 Leave a Comment Written by Cari Jansen

Digitip 001 – Adobe InDesign 2

(Revision 1.2)

Possibly the more difficult feature to get used to when converting from another page layout program to InDesign, is the way in which images are handled. I often receive questions from people in regards to sizing images using keyboard shortcuts. The following tips focus on resizing images proportionately.

Manual resizing

scale image + resize frame:
Select image with selection tool,
Apple+Shift (Ctrl-Shift [pc]) drag one of the corner handles.
Release Apple+mouse button, before releasing keys on keyboard

resize pic and frame

image only:
Select image with direct selection tool, shortcuts as above.

Incremental resizing:

image + frame :
Select image with selection tool

small increments (approx. 1% increments):
Apple+< (or >)
Ctrl+< (or >) [pc]

Large increments (approx. 5% increments):
Apple+Option+< (or >)
Ctrl+Alt< (or >) [pc]

image only:
Select image with direct selection tool

Small increments (1% increments):
Apple+< (or >)
Ctrl+< (or >) [pc]

Large increments (5% increments):
Apple+Option+< (or >)
Ctrl+Alt< (or >) [pc]

transform screenshot

Note: the resizing occurs from the centre outward/inward ONLY if the centre reference point has been selected in the transform palette.

Using Free transform tool

To scale image & scale frame together :
Select image with selection tool, then select free transform tool and Shift drag one of the corner handles.

To scale just the image:
Select the image with the direct selection tool, then select free transform tool and Shift drag one of the corner handles.

Note: the incremental methods works with this tool as well (see above)

Using Transform palette

image + frame:
select image with selection tool and set the preferred reference point.

  • enable “transform content” from the palette fly-out menu
  • enter percentage in either vertical or horizontal scale [or] enter new W or H value
  • then press Apple+Return (Ctrl-Enter [pc])

image only:
Select image with direct selection tool steps 2 & 3 only (see above).

And then there is right-mouse-click Transform>Scale as well…

Warning: There is a difference between sizing and scaling of images and frames. When scaling frames (transforming), the strokes will also scale up or down. To prevent this from happening us a resize option for the frame and a scale option for the images.

Note: If you are having problems using the keyboard shortcuts and are using OS 10.2.4, you might want to consider upgrading to OSX 10.2.5 this will fix the problem.

Adobe InDesign
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