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Scaling Effects

January 1, 2008 7 Comments Written by Cari Jansen

Digitip 062 – Adobe InDesign CS3

Last week, the InDesign Talk list had an interesting discussion about scaling effects in InDesign.  As far as I can tell from some tests I’ve just run, it is only the Drop Shadow Effect that doesn’t scale. All other effects seem to scale appropriately.

061-01

With a default InDesign install, effects will not scale properly, this applies not only to text but also to objects in general as far as I can tell.

In the example below I’m using Object > Transform > Scale to resize the text that has an Effect applied to it (satin & emboss combination). And as you can see the liquid effect I’d created on the 104pt type doesn’t seem to look similar when the type is scaled down to 52pt.

062-02

Preferences

The trick in making this work is in changing the default “When Scaling” preference to “Adjust Scaling Percentage”.

062-03

After the change in preference, perform the same transformation and compare the two results:

062-04

The change in preference has most definitely resulted in a scaled effect.  It has however an additional counter effect that some people might not like: The “effective” Font Size is now listed in parenthesis.

062-05

You can’t use the “Redefine Scaling as 100%” (Contol Panel menu) to ‘fix’ this either, as that will apply the scaling effect to the content, resulting in a distorted effect on the selected Text.

Adobe InDesign
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7 Comments
  1. F F
    September 2, 2011    

    worked! thanks heaps!

    Reply
  2. Cari Jansen Cari Jansen
    January 19, 2010    

    @Kieran, glad to help out. Thanks for answering Gavin’s question 🙂 (I failed to ever spot that one 😉 )

    Reply
  3. Kieran Metcalfe Kieran Metcalfe
    January 19, 2010    

    Hi Cari – thanks for this – just what I was looking for!

    Gavin – Do you mean Type > Create Outlines? Not sure if I’ve read your question right, but that does create vector shapes from your text…

    Cheers

    K

    Reply
  4. Cari Jansen Cari Jansen
    March 1, 2008    

    Not that I know off Gavin.

    If you need to do this because you’d like to use the effect as a graphic, you might consider export to PDF and using the PDF as a placed image in other applications.

    Reply
  5. Gavin Le Claire Gavin Le Claire
    February 29, 2008    

    Hi. Is there any way to flatten/outline live text in InDesign effects so that it retains the effects but is still vector based and hence still scalable ( but not editable?)

    And also possible copied into illustrator and remain vector based?

    Reply
  6. Cari Jansen Cari Jansen
    January 1, 2008    

    🙂 and a Happy New Year…

    I’ve added the IllustratorWorld.com site to my Links on the Resources > Illustrator page.

    Some very cool art-samples here 🙂

    Reply
  7. Gary Spedding Gary Spedding
    January 1, 2008    

    You cheated here Cari – Being in the Southern Hemisphere you must have the first Creative Suite posting of the New Year. Have a great 2008.

    Take a look at IllustratorWorld.com if you have not looked at that one recently. There have been cool posts on two of the Forums there recently.

    Reply

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