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• • December 17, 2010 at 2:22 pm #58151
    letterwoman

    Member

    With InDesign CS5, I've been having a lot of trouble copying and pasting art from one box to another. I have two boxes the exact same size and I'm trying to copy art from one box into the other box. But when I paste the art into the new box, the art doesn't come in at the exact size and position as the first box. I never had this problem with CS4.

    Is there a way to copy art into a new box using Paste Into and keep all aspects of the art the same as the first box? This is driving me crazy.

  • December 18, 2010 at 1:51 pm #58153
    Mike Rankin

    Keymaster

    letterwoman-

    I think what's driving you crazy is probably the Frame Fitting Options. Even though the two frames are the same size, if they have different Frame Fitting Options you will get different results when you Paste Into. Also make sure you don't have Auto-Fit checked in the Control panel for one of the frames.

    This is a very easy trap to fall into because if you click and drag when you place art, you automatically set Frame Fitting Options to Fit Content Proportionally. But by default all new frames will have Fitting options set to None (i.e if you draw a new frame, it won't have the same FFOs as the one you placed the art into).

    Select the frames and check Object > Fitting > Frame Fitting Options. Make the settings identical for the two frames, then you will get the same size and offsets for your placed art, as long as the frames are identical in size. If they are different in size, select Content: Fitting > None in the FFO dialog box for the frame you're pasting into. This will make the art go to the same offsets, but not resize to match the frame.

    You can use the Eyedropper to copy FFOs from one frame to another.

    This is probably worth a blog post to illustrate…

  • December 20, 2010 at 8:12 am #58156
    Rhiannon Miller

    Member

    And you can set the Frame Fitting Options as part of an object style, for ease of application to multiple and new frames.

  • December 20, 2010 at 9:00 am #58158
    letterwoman

    Member

    Thanks for info! How do you use the eyedropper to copy FFOs from one frame to another? That would be very handy so I wouldn't have to keep selecting the boxes and then checking the FFOs for each one to make them the same.

    Mike Rankin said:

    letterwoman-

    I think what's driving you crazy is probably the Frame Fitting Options. Even though the two frames are the same size, if they have different Frame Fitting Options you will get different results when you Paste Into. Also make sure you don't have Auto-Fit checked in the Control panel for one of the frames.

    This is a very easy trap to fall into because if you click and drag when you place art, you automatically set Frame Fitting Options to Fit Content Proportionally. But by default all new frames will have Fitting options set to None (i.e if you draw a new frame, it won't have the same FFOs as the one you placed the art into).

    Select the frames and check Object > Fitting > Frame Fitting Options. Make the settings identical for the two frames, then you will get the same size and offsets for your placed art, as long as the frames are identical in size. If they are different in size, select Content: Fitting > None in the FFO dialog box for the frame you're pasting into. This will make the art go to the same offsets, but not resize to match the frame.

    You can use the Eyedropper to copy FFOs from one frame to another.

    This is probably worth a blog post to illustrate…

    ---

  • December 20, 2010 at 3:09 pm #58161
    Mike Rankin

    Keymaster

    letterwoman-

    To copy FFOs from one frame to another with the Eyedropper, you must have Fill:Color and Tint selected in the Eyedropper options. Double click the Eyedropper in the Tools panel to see the options. A little weird, IMO. What do Color and Tint have to do with Crop, etc? Not much.

    Anyway, what this means is if you first click on a placed graphic, the Eyedropper will copy the fill color of the pixel you click on instead of the FFOs. So you have to click in an empty area within the frame to copy FFOs. Obviously that's no problem if the frame is empty, but if it's filled with a graphic, you'll have to either resize the graphic or the frame to make some empty space to click on.

    Unfortunately, if you resize the frame, you change the crop offsets. Depending on what you're trying to accomplish this may or may not matter. ie, if you're trying to get art to be a specific distance from the top left of the frame, you may not really care about the bottom crop, so you could open up the bottom of the frame to use the Eyedropper.

    It's all a little sketchy, but CS5 is still a huge improvement over CS 3 and 4 where there was no good way of pasting a graphic between frames.

  • December 20, 2010 at 3:37 pm #58163
    letterwoman

    Member

    Mike,

    Thanks, but jeez, what a hassle! I never had to do all this in CS4 when I used Paste Into. The image would just paste into the new box perfectly every time. I'm really starting to miss CS4. Sigh.

    Thanks again for your help.

  • December 20, 2010 at 5:40 pm #58165
    Mike Rankin

    Keymaster

    I think once you get the hang of the way CS5 works with FFO, it's actually a lot better than CS4 or 5. At least you have more options.

    If you want a frame to behave like it would in the older versions (not retain any FFO info), select the frame and choose Object > Fitting > Clear Frame Fitting Options.

    Then when you paste into, you'll see one of two things:

    1. the graphic will stay in the same position relative to the spread (if the new frame is within the graphic's bounding box).

    2. the graphic will be centered in the new frame (if the new frame is outside the graphic's bounding box).

    David wrote a post describing these behaviors: https://creativepro.com/how…..bjects.php

  • December 21, 2010 at 4:45 am #58168
    Rhiannon Miller

    Member

    I still think you'd have less hassle if you define the frame fitting options in an object style, and apply the object style before you paste. It sounds like you're doing this over and over, so this would definitely be an improvement for you. You could even make it the default object style for graphic frames, so that each new frame you create automatically has those options applied.

    ETA: And if all the frames are already created, you might be able to use the Object section of your Find/Replace tool to hunt them down and apply the object style, or even the frame fitting options directly.

  • December 21, 2010 at 8:01 am #58169
    letterwoman

    Member

    orielwen,

    This sounds like it might be a better option for me. But I tried to set up a new object style based on a box I already had set up and it didn't work. The art still pasted into the new box at a different percentage than the first one.

    Mike,

    I think that clearing the frame fitting options is the thing that's going to work the best for me. I tried it and it works just like CS4, which is what I wanted all along. Is there a way to make that the default setting when I'm making a new box so I don't have to click on every box and clear the FFOs?

  • December 21, 2010 at 10:32 am #58173
    Mike Rankin

    Keymaster

    letterwoman-

    Sadly, I don't think so. It's a tease because you can select Clear Frame Fitting Options with nothing selected, which gives the impression this might hold for all new frames you create thereafter. But in my monkeying around this isn't a sticky setting. I tried creating a new frame, clearing FFOs, and placing that frame into a library to make a CS4-like frame you could re-use. But when you place it into a layout, it forgets you cleared the FFOs and acts like a CS5 frame again. I even tried creating a frame in CS4, exporting it as a snippet, and placing that into CS5. No joy. I can't even find the code in IDML that governs the behavior you get when you clear FFOs. So there's some strange voodoo behind it.

    If it's a daily irritant (and orielwen's good ideas about object styles and find/change don't fit the situation), you could assign a keyboard shortcut to clear FFOs.

    S'all I got.

  • December 21, 2010 at 10:35 am #58174
    letterwoman

    Member

    Thanks! I appreciate your investigating solutions into this annoying problem. You've been very helpful.

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