Using the Control Palette and the Transform Pane
For more control than you get from the Rotation, Shear, and Scale tools, InDesign offers the Control palette and the Transform pane (Window ‚ Transform, or F9), both shown in Figure 24-4, to perform several other modifications on a selected picture.
Figure 24-4: The Transform pane (top) and the Control palette for pictures (bottom), as well as their palette menus . Note that the Transform pane offers a subset of the Control palette's functions.
The Transform pane and Control palette have the following tools in common: Scale X Percentage, Scale Y Percentage, Rotation Angle, and Shear X Angle. Plus both let you choose a selection point (such as for rotation or shearing ) and lock scaling to be proportional (making, for example, a 70 percent reduction in scale horizontally also reduce the picture 70 percent vertically).
The palette menus are almost identical, with both letting you rotate objects in predefined increments (90 ‚ ° clockwise, 90 ‚ ° counterclockwise, and 180 ‚ °) and flipping objects vertically and/or horizontally. Both also let you control the degree of precision in transformations, as described later. The Control palette's palette menu offers access to the Stroke Styles dialog box (see Chapter 28), while the Transform pane's palette menu lets you select whether scaling a text frame also scales the text within it, plus whether just the currently selected object or the entire group it belongs to is affected by the transformation.
The Control palette offers several additional controls: specifying the stroke width and type, selecting the object or contents (the same as using the Selection tool or the Direction tool, respectively), fitting the content to the frame or fitting the frame to the content, centering the content, and selecting the previous or next object in a group.
| Tip ‚ | If you hold down the Option or Alt key when you press Return or Enter to apply a value you've entered into a field in the Control palette or Transform pane, the modification is applied to a clone of the selected object. |
| Cross-Reference ‚ | Chapter 11 covers the Control palette's selection options, such as Next Object in Group. Chapter 12 covers group creation and modification. |
Changing an object's point of origin
The nine small, white squares at the top-left corner of the Transform pane and far left of the Control palette let you specify the point of origin for the selected object. An object's point of origin is used to determine the values in the X Location (horizontal distance from left edge of page) and Y Location (vertical distance from top of page) fields. When you apply a transformation, it's applied to the selected object relative to the fixed point of origin. By default, the point of origin of a graphics frame is the center point.
A filled-in black square indicates the current point of origin. If no square is black, it means that a custom point of origin has been established by clicking and dragging the object's point of origin. In most cases, it's simplest to use the default point of origin, but you may want to click the middle square if, for example, you want to rotate a picture around its center, or you may use a different corner or midpoint in certain situations. To change the point of origin for a selected object, click on one of the small white squares.
Repositioning a picture within its frame
You can reposition a picture within its frame by changing the values in the Transform pane's or Control palette's X Location and/or Y Location fields. The values in these fields indicate the distance between the upper-left corner of the page and the selected object's point of origin.
| QuarkXPress User ‚ | Users of QuarkXPress may find InDesign's location approach to be a little strange . In QuarkXPress, a picture's position is relative to the box that contains it; not the upper-left corner of the page. (I'm assuming here that you haven't moved the document's ruler origin, which by default is in the upper-left corner of a page or spread.) |
Scaling a picture
You can scale a picture by changing the value in the Width and/or Height fields or by changing the value in the Horizontal Scale and/or Vertical Scale fields. Most graphics designers are familiar with the concept of scaling an object by specifying a percentage value. If you're one of them, you'll probably use the Scale fields. After all, horizontally scaling a 4-inch-wide picture to two- thirds of its original size by applying a Horizontal Scale value of 66.6% is easier than changing the picture's width to 2.667 inches.
You can enter scale values between 1% and 10000%. If you want to maintain a picture's original proportions , make sure the values in the Horizontal Scale and Vertical Scale fields are the same. If you want to return a picture to the size it was when you first imported it, specify Horizontal Scale and Vertical Scale values of 100%.
| Tip ‚ | You can use math to figure out scale entries. For example, if you want the scale to be 30 percent larger, you could enter +30% rather than 130% . Or you could enter /6 to make the object one sixth of its current size. Other legitimate actions include subtraction (for example, ‚ 29% ) and multiplication (for example, *7 ). |
In addition to specifying a value in the Horizontal Scale or Vertical Scale field, you can choose one of the predefined values from the fields' pop-up menus, or you can highlight a value and press the up or down arrow keys on the keyboard. Each press of an arrow key changes the value by 1 percent. If you hold down the Shift key while clicking an arrow, the increment of change is 10 percent.
The Fitting options (Object ‚ Fitting), which are explained later in this chapter, also let you change the scale of a picture relative to the size of its frame.
Rotating a picture
You can change the angle of a selected picture by entering a different value in the Rotation field, choosing one of the predefined angles from the field's pop-up menu, or by choosing any of the three rotation options ‚ Rotate 180 ‚ °, Rotate 90 ‚ ° CW, and Rotate 90 ‚ ° CCW ‚ in the Transform pane's or Control palette's palette menu. If you choose one of these options, the current angle of the selected object is added to the applied angle. For example, if you choose Rotate 90 ‚ ° CCW (counterclockwise), an object that's currently rotated 12 degrees will end up with a rotation angle of 102 degrees. If you choose to enter a value in the Rotation field, positive values rotate the selected item counterclockwise; negative values rotate it clockwise.
| Note ‚ | The Transformations Are Totals option in the Transform pane's and Control palette's palette menu relates to the angle of rotation of a nested object. If Transformations Are Totals is checked, the Rotation angle displayed for a nested item is calculated by adding its angle to the angle of the containing frame. For example, if Transformations Are Totals is checked, a picture that's been rotated 30 degrees that's in a frame that's been rotated 30 degrees will display a Rotation value of 60 ‚ °. If Transformations Are Totals were unchecked, the Rotation value would be 30 ‚ °. |
Skewing a picture
You can skew, or slant, a picture in its frame by applying a Skew value in the Transform pane or Control palette, or by choosing a predefined value from the field's pop-up menu. Positive skew values slant an object to the right (that is, the top edge of the object is moved to the right), while negative values slant an object to the left (the bottom edge is moved to the right). You can enter skew values between 1 ‚ ° and 89 ‚ ° (although values above 70 ‚ ° cause considerable distortion).
To "unskew" a picture, enter a Skew value of 0 ‚ °. Figure 24-5 shows a picture that's been skewed.
Figure 24-5: The applied Skew value of ‚ 30 ‚ ° causes the picture to lean to the left.
| Note ‚ | When you use the Shear tool, you change the selected object's angle of rotation and skew angle simultaneously . |
Flipping a picture
The three flipping commands ‚ Flip Horizontal, Flip Vertical, and Flip Both ‚ in the Transform pane's and Control palette's palette menu let you create a mirror image of a selected picture. If you choose Flip Horizontal, the picture is flipped along a vertical axis (that is, the right edge and left edge exchange places); if you choose Flip Vertical, the picture is flipped upside down; and if you choose Flip Both, the picture is flipped horizontally and vertically to produce an upside-down and backward version of the original.
Be careful when flipping pictures: Generally you'll want to flip both a picture and its frame. To do so, make sure you select the frame using the Selection tool (rather than the Direct Selection tool, which selects the picture itself). If you flip a picture that's been cropped in a frame, you'll probably have to recrop the picture.
| Note ‚ | When you flip a picture, the axis around which the picture flips runs through the frame's point of origin. |
