InDesign Image Formatting
As we went over in the last video in the Images mini-series, images are a major part of publication design and publishing. Once you know how to correctly bring them into InDesign the next step, which we will go over in this short video, is formatting. We will discuss how to resize as needed, apply effects, and understand frame fittings. Stay tuned for more short tutorial videos. The full text from this InDesign Image Formatting video is below if you prefer to follow along that way.
Frame Fitting
There are a few different ways to define how images fit in their frames. To set up Frame Fitting select the object frame and choose Object > Fitting. From here you can select any of the following options:
- Fill Frame Proportionally which resizes content to fill the entire even if it causes cropping
- Fit Content Proportionally which will resize to fit the frame with no cropping
- Fit Frame to Content which shrinks the frame down to the size of the object
- Fit Content to Frame which resizes the content to fit the frame even if unproportional
- Center Content which centers the image within the frame without adjusting image size
Object Styles
Now you have set up the fitting and styling for one image, but you don’t have to do this manually for all future images. You can define Object Styles in Window > Styles > Object Styles to store image styles so you can apply them to all images in just a click.
To create an object style select the styled image that you want to base the style off of and click Create New Style. Double click on the style you just made to see all extended options. Now it is simple to add this same style to all of your images.
If I go in and change the stroke color, all of the images with the defined Object Style are changed. It is best practice to set up an Object Style for all images whether there is anything even applied or not (like a drop shadow or a stroke). The point is having the style in the template gives you full flexibility to change anything after the catalog is created. For example, you can turn on a drop shadow for all 3000 image frames in your catalog at once if you decide to later.
