Scale One Image in a Group

Say you’ve got an image grouped with its caption (Object > Group). You want to scale the image (and its frame) but not scale the text in the caption frame. But if you click on the image with the Selection tool to scale it with Command/Ctrl-Shift-dragging, the whole group gets selected; and as you drag, the whole group scales, like so (before and after):

A user posted this situation on the InDesign User Forums recently, and among all the responses received, I liked this solution the best: Use the Position tool. It’s hiding under the Direct Selection tool in both ID CS2 and CS3. Just press and hold there to reveal it and choose it:

The Position tool is a combo Selection/Direct Selection tool specifically for images and their frames. When you click with it on an image frame, it acts like the Selection tool, allowing you to drag on the frame handles to crop the image, or Command/Ctrl-Shift-drag to scale the image and its frame. When you click inside the image, it acts like the Direct Selection tool, letting you move the image around within the frame or scale it without affecting the frame.

Another neat feature of the Position tool is that it “doesn’t speak Group,” so it’s impossible to inadvertently modify other objects in a grouped selection while you’re working on an image in that group.

Watch the Cursor

To use the Selection Tool mode of the Position tool, move the cursor so it’s pointing at the image frame (not inside the image), and click. Its cursor changes to let you know when you’re in the right position, so keep an eye on it before you click.

For example, starting with a selected group (left image below), you’ll know you’re in the right place to click the Position tool — to select it for scaling — when its cursor looks like an arrow without a tail. If the group isn’t selected (right image below), its cursor will look like an arrow with a square dot when it’s in the right position. In each of these screen shots, the cursor is on the right side of the image:

After you click, you’ll see the image’s handles. You can Command/Ctrl-Shift-drag on any handle of the selected image to scale it without affecting the other objects in the group, as shown below. The image is scaled up (I dragged on its upper right corner) but the text frame grouped with it is unaffected.