InReview: QuickResize

A script that makes the job of resizing an InDesign document much simpler

It’s happened to all of us. For one reason or another you have to resize a document that you’ve pretty much completed. You have a couple of choices built in to InDesign: liquid layout or layout adjustment. Both feature kind of work, but require you to make certain choices, and if they’re not correct you wind up with either objects on the pasteboard (if shrinking the page size) or (if enlarging it) enough white space to make Jony Ive jealous. Fiddling around with this stuff is about as much fun to me as drawing a clipping path. Enter Quick Resize, a script from developer Ariel Walden (www.id-extras.com). The website description of this script states:  “QuickResize presents a simple window where you can input the new size you’d like the current InDesign document to be.” Based on my test drive, simple is a very accurate description. Let’s take a look.

Installation

Because this is a script, there’s no installation routine. Instead, you’ll just need to copy the QuickResize.jsxbin file to your scripts folder in the InDesign application folder. While you could go searching for it, there’s a little trick for installing scripts that I’ll share with you to make it a bit more, shall we say, simple. Open InDesign and, if the Scripts panel is not part of your current workspace, open it (Window > Utility > Scripts), and right-click on either the User or the Application folder in the panel (Figure 1). Choose Reveal in Explorer (Windows) or Reveal in Finder (Mac).

You should put the JSXBIN file inside the Scripts Panel folder (or a folder inside that folder). Once you’ve installed it, it should start working immediately, and you’ll find the script in the Scripts panel (Figure 2).

Activation

The script needs to be licensed before it can be used, so once it’s installed, double-click it to bring up the activation screen, which will prompt you for your serial number (Figure 3).

Activating on my Mac and Windows machines, I was unable to paste the serial number in from the clipboard. If you have the same experience, enter it carefully and click OK. In the future, instead of having to use the Scripts panel every time, you can make this even simpler by adding a menu item for it. Launch the script, and click About. Click the Create Menu Item box (Figure 4) to add an ID-Extras menu to your workspace, from which you can choose the script.

How does it work?

This script takes every item on the page and scales it up or down, leaving you with a completely editable layout. In some cases, that “simple” action may well be enough. What kind of choices do you have in resizing? Let’s take a look at the interface after launching (Figure 5). (Note that you must have a document open or you’ll get an error message telling you to open one.)

As shown in Figure 6, the interface is quite simple. You can set a new size for the document using most measurement units or by percentage. You can control aspect ratio as well, but as we’ll see, and in keeping with the simple nature of things, it’s best to use this script with identical aspect ratios. For those involved in digital publishing, you’ll note that pixels are not an option here, but InDesign recognizes a point as a pixel for that purpose. If you’ve got the freedom to resize based on only one dimension, leaving the Constrain Proportions check box ticked will result in the other dimension being automatically calculated for you.

How well does it work?

First let’s take a look at the best part of this script. We’ve already covered the drawbacks involved in using the native tools in InDesign. While they work, in many cases (at least the ones I’ve been in) they leave me with more than a desirable amount of cleanup to do. Many other solutions to changing page sizes involved exporting and placing PDFs and then scaling them, but you may wind up with something difficult, if not impossible, to edit. With only a small change to the size, those solutions may be enough, but when you’re making a large change, it’s entirely possible that you may want to tweak the layout a bit, especially when it comes to text where a dramatic change in size may require some tracking or leading corrections. This script leaves you with a fully editable document. Let’s look at what happens when we increase the document to 200% (Figure 7).

Not too shabby a job. Let’s take a look at how the text is scaled (Figure 8). Notice how the text has been scaled up. I’m assuming there’s a small bug here, since the leading looks fine but the numbers aren’t showing it. Choosing the text frame and redefining the scaling to 100% from the Control panel menu fixes it, if you’re so inclined to do so, though the developer does advise against it: “Another side-effect is that the text in text frames will display with a size in parentheses—e.g., 14pt (21pt). To get rid of the parentheses, select the text frame, go to the flyout menu of the Control panel, and select Redefine Scaling As 100%. However, be warned: owing to various InDesign bugs (or limitations), selecting this option can cause text to reflow or acquire some weird formatting—which is why QuickResize does not do this by default.” (Figure 9) For what it’s worth, I didn’t run into any issues doing so, and given that the best part of this script is that it gives you the ability to edit, I don’t look at reflowing text as a dealbreaker.

The not quite so good

What about other aspects of the layout? Let’s look at some text that has a drop shadow applied (Figure 10).

If you think the settings look the same, it’s because they do. The script doesn’t seem to scale effects no matter what my scaling preferences are set at. What about scaling when the aspect ratio is not the same? I would not expect things to be quite as smooth, and in my testing, that turned out to be the case. For example, let’s look at an extreme case where we change our landscape page to portrait (Figure 11). Not exactly what you want to see, but it’s not all bad. For digital publishing projects where you need to create a phone layout from a tablet layout, just changing one dimension will give you a page that can scroll or can be easily adjusted (Figure 12). For instance, the iPhone 5 has a width of 640 px, but keeping the aspect ratio at 1:1 gives us a height of 852 px. We have two choices: tweak the layout and change the page setup, or just add a smooth scrolling action to it for DPS. Personally, I’ve always elected the latter.

The verdict

QuickResize is easy to use and does what it’s supposed to do; it quickly resizes any layout and certainly lives up to being simple. Will it work for you in every situation? As we’ve seen, of course not, but nothing simple does. Is it enough for you to invest $59 in? Only you can answer that, but I do recommend that you give it a try. A demo version that works in a very unique way is available for download. With it, you can test the script, but the results will be changed by up to 15% randomly. Product: QuickResize Company: Id-Extras Website: id-extras.com Price: US$59 Support: Mac and Windows, CS4 and later Rating: 4 butterflies