For many years, when it came to working with arrowheads, InDesign did not offer the same level of control that Illustrator did. Specifically, InDesign lacked the ability to do the following four things:
- Scale beginning and ending arrowheads independently
- Link the beginning and ending arrowheads so they could be kept in proportion as they are scaled
- Swap the start and end arrowheads
- Control how the arrowhead tips are placed in relation to the path ends
But happily, all these features have been in InDesign since CC 2017. The place to access them is the Stroke panel.
The figure below illustrates what you can do to customize arrowheads.
1. Start and End values both set to 100%; the Start value appears out of scale for the stroke weight.
2. The Link option deselected, and the Start value is changed to 50% to produce a better result, the End value is not changed.
3. To scale both Start and End in proportion, click the Lock option. When the Start value is set to 60%, the End value is automatically changed to 120%.
4. This one uses the same values as in #3, but the “Swap start and end arrowheads” icon is clicked.
Arrowhead alignment options
There are also two Align options: arrowheads can be aligned so the arrowhead extends beyond the path end, or aligns just to the end of the path. This setting applies both to the beginning and ending arrowheads. In example 3 in the figure above, I selected the former option (and selected the Direct Selection tool to show the path ends).
Conveniently, this feature is also found in three other areas of the InDesign interface:
- Object Styles Stroke & Corner Options
- Find Object Format Options in the Object tab of the Find/Change dialog box
- Eyedropper Options (double-click the Eyedropper tool); three new choices here are arrowhead tip alignment, scale factor for start arrowhead, and scale factor for end arrowhead
This article was last modified on February 18, 2025
This article was first published on February 18, 2025
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