More InDesign (really) Quick Tips

When I used to use Quark on a reg­u­lar basis I loved the key­board com­mand that allowed you to scale art placed inside a bound­ing box while keep­ing the bound­ing box the same size, it was very handy for pro­duc­tion work. It took a while but I finally found the key­board short cut in InDe­sign and thought I’d share.

Increase the size of a graphic with­out chang­ing the size of the bound­ing box.

Click on the box con­tain­ing an image that you want to scale with the direct selec­tion tool (the arrow with the white head), then fol­low these steps.

Scale the image size down in 1% incre­ments by hit­ting:
CMD + comma (MAC) or CTRL + comma (PC)
Scale the image up in 1% incre­ments by hit­ting:
CMD + period (MAC) or CTRL + period (PC)

If you want to scale at a larger per­cent­age click on the box con­tain­ing an image that you want to scale with the direct selec­tion tool (the arrow with the white head), then:

Scale the image size down in 5% incre­ments by hit­ting:
CMD + OPT + comma (MAC) or CTRL + ALT + comma (PC)
Scale the image size up in 5% incre­ments by hit­ting:
CMD + OPT + period (MAC) or CTRL + ALT + period (PC)
Note this doesn’t work on text only graphics.

Increase the size of a box or frame but not the content

Sim­i­larly, if you want to increase the size of the bound­ing box or frame (this works with any kind of frame, text or graphic) but NOT the con­tent fol­low these steps.

Click on the box you want to scale with the selec­tion tool (the arrow with the black head), then:

Scale the box size down in 1% incre­ments by hit­ting:
CMD + comma (MAC) or CTRL + comma (PC)
Scale the box size up in 1% incre­ments by hit­ting:
CMD + period (MAC) or CTRL + period (PC)

If you want to scale at a larger per­cent­age, click on the box you want to scale with the selec­tion tool (the arrow with the black head), then:

Scale the box size down in 5% incre­ments by hit­ting:
CMD + OPT + comma (MAC) or CTRL + ALT + comma (PC)
Scale the box size up in 5% incre­ments by hit­ting:
CMD + OPT + period (MAC) or CTRL + ALT + period (PC)

Hope­fully that was help­ful, do you have any good InDe­sign tips to share?

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• Adobe InDesign Quick Really Quick Tip | Devlin Donnelly Design July 22, 2010 at 10:06 am

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