10 Terrific Image Tips

With these cool techniques you can be an InDesign image master.

Almost every InDesign layout contains placed or embedded images. And the more images you have to work with in your documents, the more you need to maximize your efficiency, by knowing all the little tips and tricks. These ten tips will get you started on the road to InDesign image enlightenment.

1. Re-place Images

Have you ever imported a PDF and then later realized you need to change the import options, such as the Crop To setting? Or maybe you placed the wrong page from a multi-page Illustrator, PDF, or InDesign file. Normally you’d have to place the image all over again to access these settings, because the Place dialog box is the only path to the Import Options dialog box. It’s a hassle—especially if you have many placed images to change. That’s why John Hawkinson wrote a script to take the pain out of the process. It’s called rePlace.jsx, and when you run it, you’ll immediately see the Import Options dialog box, where you can change the settings to your liking (Figure 1).

Figure 1: Running the rePlace script brings up the Place dialog box, where you can choose different options.

You can download the script here.

2. Use Live Distribute

class=”p2″>You know that you can change the position of a selected object by dragging it. But did you know that you can change the space between selected objects by dragging too? The feature is called Live Distribute. To use it, just select two or more objects, click and hold on a side or corner of the selection bounding box, and then press and hold the spacebar as you drag.

3. Make ’em the Right Size

You would think that InDesign would offer a simple, obvious way to size an image and the frame containing that image to a precise measurement. As it turns out, there is a simple way of doing this, but it’s not at all obvious. If you use the Width and Height fields in the Control panel, you’ll just resize the frame or the image (depending on what you have selected). Instead, the trick is to use one of the Scale percentage fields—just enter the exact size (including units) that you want. For example, to make an image 3 inches wide, select it and enter “3in” in the Scale X field of the Control panel (Figure 2).

Figure 2: Enter the size and units in either of the Scale fields to resize an image and its frame at the same time.

Be sure not to leave off the units, or InDesign will think you want to apply a percentage (in this case, you’d get an image scaled down to 3% of its original width).

4. Make ’em the Same Size

Absolute consistency is one of the keys to making your layouts look professional. It’s not good enough to set images about the same size when they should be exactly the same size. Unfortunately, it’s not apparent how to make two (or more) images the same size in InDesign. An object style won’t do the job. The trick is to set the size of one image, and then apply that size to others with a Transform Again command. For example, to make a bunch of images all 200 px tall and 300 px wide, first set the Height and Width of one frame in the Control or Transform panel; then select all the another images and choose Object > Transform Again > Transform Sequence Again Individually (Figure 3).

Figure 3: Transform Again is your secret weapon for making several images the same size in your layout.

The “Individually” part means, apply the same set of changes to each object in the selection.

5. Customize the Links Panel

The Links panel is, without a doubt, the most information-packed panel in all of InDesign. It is capable of displaying over 60 separate pieces of information about every linked or embedded image in your layout. But very few of us need all of that data in front of our eyeballs. Instead, you should customize the Links panel display to show just the information you want to see about your placed files. From the Links panel menu, choose Panel Options, and then select which items you want to appear in the panel’s columns and Link Info section. And while you’re there, decide if you want to display nested links (where the same image appears multiple times in your layout), link thumbnails, and regular or small sized rows (Figure 4).

Figure 4: Just a few of the many Links panel options

6. Discover the Benefits of Right-clicking

There are so many cool right-click tricks for images, it’s hard to keep track of them all! Here are a few:

Want to get your hands on a placed image file quickly, but you’re not sure where it is on your hard drive or server? Right-click it on your layout, and choose Reveal in Finder/Explorer.

Right-click on a link in the Links panel for all kinds of useful options, such as Copy Info, Embed/Unembed, Relink, Edit Original/Edit With, Reveal in Finder/Explorer, etc. (Figure 5).

Figure 5: When in doubt, right-click.

Right-click in the Link Info area of the Links panel for other cool options (Copy Path, Copy Info).

Right-click an image and choose Object Layer Options to adjust layer visibility of placed images that contain layers.

7. Wield the Power of Object Styles

One of our mantras here at InDesign Magazine is “Use object styles!” They can save you so much time when you’re laying out pages, and they can save your bacon when you have enormous changes to make right before a deadline. This is true with any kind of page element, including image frames. You can set up object styles to apply consistent strokes, fills, corner options, fitting options, anchored object options, transparency effects, and more (Figure 6).

Figure 6: When you use object styles, all it takes is one click to go from a jumbled mess of image frames to perfect order and harmony.

If you work with long documents, I promise you will never regret the time you spend creating and applying object styles to your image frames.

8. Export Efficiently

At some point, you’ll probably need to export images from an InDesign layout as a JPEGs or PNGs—and when you do that, you may need them at a specific pixel size. This kind of thing is easy to do  in a program like Photoshop or Illustrator, but in InDesign you need to use a trick that involves a little bit of math in the Export dialog box. First, select the image frame, and note how many pixels wide it is (you can find that in the Control panel). Then choose File > Export and choose a Format of JPG or PNG. In the Export dialog box, choose Selection. And in the Resolution (ppi) field, enter a little math equation: your desired width/current width * 72. For example, if your desired width is 600 px and the current width of the image is 900 px, you’d type 600/900*72, and press Enter (Figure 7).

Figure 7: Let InDesign handle the math needed to export images at a specific size.

InDesign calculates the math for you and exports the image at the correct size—so in this case, you end up with an image 600 px wide.

The math is even simpler if you work in inches. It’s the desired width (in pixels)/current width (in inches). So if the image is 4 inches wide, and you want to export a copy that’s 600 pixels wide, just enter 600/4 in the Export dialog box.

It’s worth noting that when InDesign does the math, it rounds off to the nearest whole number—so unfortunately the size of your image file might be off by a pixel or two in some cases. Also, when you export a text frame, InDesign includes enough vertical space to fit the full height of the font—so it adds space above and below the text frame if necessary.

If you hate doing even simple math, or need pixel-precise results every time, check out Keith Gilbert’s scripts for exporting InDesign content as images at specific sizes.

9. Tweak Your Preferences

Feel like InDesign is fighting against you as you’re trying to work with images? Try changing some of the preferences related to image handling, like these:

When you use the Relink command, you have a choice of which folder InDesign takes you to. It can either go to the folder you went to the last time you relinked a file, or to the original location of the file you’re currently relinking. Choosing the right option can really save you a lot of wasted time clicking around to find the right files. To select the behavior you want, go to Preferences > File Handling, and select either Most Recent Relink Folder or Original Link Folder from the Default Relink Folder menu (Figure 8).

Figure 8: You can pick the folder InDesign displays when you relink images, saving you lots of tedious navigating.

When you scale an image inside its frame, and then later replace that image with another picture, how do you want the incoming image to behave? Do you want it to resize automatically? Or should it keep its original size, regardless of whether the updated art fits the frame? You can choose, with the File Handling preference called Preserve Image Dimensions When Relinking.

Don’t want layers added to an Illustrator file to appear in the placed version of the image in your layout? In File Handling preferences, select Hide New Layers When Updating or Relinking.

Want better-looking image previews? Got a fast computer? Change the definition of Typical Display Performance preferences to High Quality across the board.

10. Edit Original

Need to tweak (or overhaul) a placed image? No need to go hunting for the image on your hard drive. You can instantly open a placed graphic in the default application on your computer by holding Option/Alt and double-clicking the graphic. You can even use Edit Original on multiple selected items at once by right-clicking and choosing the command from the menu that pops up. If you want to use an application other than the default, choose Edit With (Figure 9).

Figure 9: Right-clicking an image reveals commands for editing a placed image, either with your default application for the image’s file type (Edit Original) or another application of your choosing (Edit With).

And here’s another benefit of using Edit Original: when you come back to InDesign, the link is automatically updated (no need to choose Update in the Links panel)!

Tons More Tips

Are we already at the end of the article? Feels like we barely scratched the surface! Indeed, there must be hundreds more little tips that make working with images in InDesign easier, faster, and more fun. And at InDesignSecrets, we’ve covered many of them! Just check out the archive of image-related posts and you’ll be well on your way to being an InDesign image master. And that is one pretty picture!