IMAGES

You can import images directly from Photoshop and Illustrator by copying and pasting (note: Photoshop images can’t be too much larger than you need them to be in InDesign). Images copied and pasted from Illustrator retain their control points, and you can use the direct selection tool to adjust things as needed.

Images can also be placed into a document.

InDesign will recognized and import AI, PSD, TIF, EPS, PDF, JPG, and GIF images. I’d stick to PSD, TIF and EPS formats. Too often, I’ve seen files saved in Illustrator’s native format become unstable, and GIF and JPG formats are for web images, not print.

an image pasted directly from Photoshop

f you create and select a frame, then choose “place” from the File menu, your image will be placed in the frame. If you just choose “place,” your cursor will turn into a paintbrush icon. Clicking anywhere in your document will place the picture from it’s top left corner and create a frame around it automatically.

The arrow tools each serve a different purpose when it comes to working with images, just as the selection tool and the text tool deal with different aspects of text frames.

In the case of images, the selection tool (solid arrow) deals with the frame around the image. Use it to adjust the frame’s size and position. Frames selected with the selection tool have a blue bounding box and control points.

The direct selection tool (hollow arrow) deals with the frame contents: i.e. the image. Use the direct selection tool to position an image within a frame, and to adjust it’s size. (As with Quark, it’s never a good idea to make a bitmap image larger, only smaller.) In the case of paths pasted directly from Illustrator, the direct selection tool is used to adjust the control points. A selected image has a brown bounding box and control points.

To affect changes to the frame and its contents, use the transform tools (scale, skew, rotate, etc.) or the transform palette. Or, use the selection tool and hold the command key to scale both the frame and the object at once.

an image pasted from Illustrator

The Object menu has a “fitting” option. This allows you to fit content to a frame (bad idea—it will distort your image) or to fit the content to the frame containing it (nice idea!), to center the image within its frame, and to fit the content to the frame while retaining the proportions (this is OK, it won’t distort the image). These options are also available in the control palette at the bottom of your workspace.

You’ll note in the peony images (above) that InDesign has automatically recognized the clipping path created around the flowers in Photoshop.

If you don’t want the clipping path “active” make sure to check “show import options” in the import dialog box. You can then choose to import the clipping path or not.

You can also use the “clipping path” option under the Object menu to create a clipping path. This works best, of course, when the object you want to silhouette is on a white background.

Select the image with the direct selection tool, and choose “clipping path” from the Object menu. Selecting “detect edges” creates a clipping path that you can adjust using the direct selection tool. This process also allows you to assign a background color to the frame.

If you mistakenly place an image with a clipping path and don’t want it active, choose “clipping path” from the Object menu and select “none” from the popup menu.

Any image or text frame can be set to text wrap or runaround. Open the text wrap palette from the Window menu.

Select the object around which you want text to wrap, and then select the wrap method from the options at the top of the window. Establish an amount of offset in the fields below. It’s good practice to offset text at least 6 points to 1 pica away from an image or text frame.

If you have a clipping path active, select the image (not it's frame) and choose “wrap around image” from the text wrap palette. It will offset the text using the clipping path as it’s boundary. Remember you can always create a clipping path using Object > clipping path.

The one drawback to this feature is InDesign allows text to jump across an image from left to right. That being the case, make sure either your text frame is wide enough to prevent this, or that your image is off to one side of the text block. The only time when you wouldn’t worry about this is when your text spans two columns.

Use the direct selection tool to adjust the offset path, and add or delete control points using the pen plus and pen minus tools. Use the convert point tool (also behind the pen tool) to change curve points to corners, and vice versa.

As with imported text, InDesign maintains a link to a placed image, displaying its size and position in the document, but calling on the original image file when it comes time to print. If you open an InDesign file and the link has been broken for some reason (like you moved the image file to a different folder).

InDesign displays a links palette asking you to locate the missing image(s). You can also use the links palette to ensure that all the images are available before you print: select the missing file in the list, and just click on the “relink” button at the bottom.

You can also embed images in InDesign, meaning you don’t have to have the original available to print successfully. (Don’t throw the original away though!) While this may seem to be a smarter idea, since you can have your document on it’s own disk without any of the images and still print, it can create huge InDesign files—after all, it’s now storing all the image data, and if the image is 6 or 7 MB, the InDesign document will be 6 or 7 MB larger than it has to be. Use the submenu at the top right of the link palette to embed a selected image.

Use the same method to “unembed” a file: select it and choose unembed. This is an interesting feature, since you can choose to recreate the link with the original image, or InDesign will save the embedded image as a new file and create a link to it.