Chapter 10: Manipulating Objects 255 The first four options let you select another object relative to the currently selected object: l First Object Above selects the topmost object. l Next Object Above selects the object immediately on top of the current object. l Next Object Below selects the object immediately under the current object. l Last Object Below selects the bottommost object. If no objects are selected, InDesign bases its selection on the creation order. Tip You can also access these four selection options by Control+clicking or right-clicking an object and choosing Select from the contextual menu. n The Select submenu has four other options: l If an object has content (text or graphic) and you’ve selected that content, choose Object ➪ Select ➪ Container to choose the frame (the container). This is the same as selecting it with the Selection tool. l If an object has content (text or graphic) and you’ve selected its frame (the container), choose Object ➪ Select ➪ Content to choose the content within the object. This is basically the same as selecting it with the Direct Selection tool. l If you have selected an object in a group of objects, using the Direct Selection tool, choose Object ➪ Select ➪ Previous Object in Group to navigate to the previous object in the group. l Similarly, if you have selected an object in a group of objects, using the Direct Selection tool, choose Object ➪ Select ➪ Next Object in Group to navigate to the previous object in the group. Note Object creation order determines what is previous or next in a group. n Keyboard shortcuts You can use the keyboard shortcuts listed in this section. Although this approach takes memoriz- ing the commands, it’s the fastest way to change your selection because you don’t have to mouse around to the menus: l Option+Shift+Ô+] or Ctrl+Alt+Shift+] selects the topmost object. l Option+Ô+] or Ctrl+Alt+] selects the object immediately on top of the current object. l Option+Ô+[ or Ctrl+Alt+[ selects the object immediately under the current object. l Option+Shift+Ô+[ or Ctrl+Alt+Shift+[ selects the bottommost object. 18_607169-ch10.indd 25518_607169-ch10.indd 255 4/22/10 7:53 PM4/22/10 7:53 PM Please purchase PDF Split-Merge on www.verypdf.com to remove this watermark. Part III: Object Fundamentals 256 Control panel selection buttons The Control panel also provides iconic buttons — Select Previous Object and Select Next Object — to select the next or previous object, as well as the Select Contents and Select Container iconic but- tons to select the content or container (frame). Figure 10.3 shows the buttons. If you Shift+click either selection button, InDesign jumps past four objects and selects the fifth one. If you Ô+click or Ctrl+click either button, InDesign selects the bottommost or topmost object, respectively. Note If you use the Select Previous Object or Select Next Object buttons and reach the top or bottom of the object stack, InDesign loops back from the top to the bottom object or from the bottom to the top object. n Selecting multiple objects When an object is selected, you can move or modify it. When several objects are selected, you can move or modify all the objects at one time, saving you the time and drudgery of selecting and per- forming the same modification to several objects one at a time. You have several options for select- ing multiple objects. You can: l Choose the Selection tool and press and hold Shift while clicking in succession the objects you want to select. l Choose any of the selection tools and then click in an empty portion of the page and drag a rectangle (called a marquee) around any portion of each object you want to select. Make sure you don’t click an item (which selects it) or you’ll move it when you drag. l If you use the Selection tool, the bounding box of each item is selected. You can resize any of the bounding boxes, but the anchor points and direction lines of the shapes within are not selected and cannot be moved. l If you use the Direct Selection tool, the anchor points and direction handles of the shapes in the bounding boxes are selected. You can change the shape of any of the objects by dragging an anchor point or a direction handle. l If you want to select all items on a page or spread, choose Edit ➪ Select All or press Ô+A or Ctrl+A. (If the Type tool is selected and a text frame is active when you choose Select All, you highlight all the text, if any, in the frame.) If the Direct Selection tool is selected when you choose Select All, the anchor points and direction handles of the shapes in the selected objects’ bounding boxes are selected. If any other tool is selected when you choose Select All, the bounding boxes of the objects are selected. Deselecting objects A selected object remains selected until you cause it to become deselected, and there are many rea- sons you might want to deselect an item. For example, you might want to deselect a text frame if 18_607169-ch10.indd 25618_607169-ch10.indd 256 4/22/10 7:53 PM4/22/10 7:53 PM Please purchase PDF Split-Merge on www.verypdf.com to remove this watermark. Chapter 10: Manipulating Objects 257 you want to see how it looks when displayed without the frame’s in and out ports visible, or you might want to simply let go of an object you just finished working on. You can deselect a selected object in several ways: l Click in an empty portion of the page with any of the selection tools selected. l Press and hold Shift with any of the selection tools selected and click the object you want to deselect. l Choose any of the object-creation tools (the Pen, Pencil, Line, or any shape- and frame- creation tools) and then click and drag to create a new object. l If you want to deselect all items on a page or spread, choose Edit ➪ Deselect All or press Shift+Ô+A or Ctrl+Shift+A. (If the Type tool is selected and a text frame is active when you choose Deselect All, you deselect any text highlighted in the frame.) Moving Objects Before you can move an object, you must first select it. When an object is selected, InDesign pro- vides several methods for moving or copying it. You can move a selected object by: l Clicking and dragging it to a different location: When you drag an object, you can move it anywhere within the current page or spread, into an open library (see Chapter 7 for more information about libraries), or into another document (if another document is open and its window is visible). If you drag an object from one document to another, a copy of the object is placed in the target document and the original object remains unchanged in the source document. Tip Press and hold Shift as you drag to restrict the angle of movement to the nearest 45-degree angle based on the direction in which you’re moving your mouse. n l Pressing any of the arrow keys: Each time you press an arrow key, the object is nudged by the distance specified in the Cursor Key field in the Units & Increments pane of the Preferences dialog box (choose File ➪ Preferences ➪ Units & Increments or press Ô+K on the Mac, or choose Edit ➪ Preferences ➪ Units & Increments or press Ctrl+K in Windows). The default nudge value is 1 point. If you press and hold Shift when using arrow keys, the nudge increment is 10 points. l Selecting it with the Selection or Direct Selection tool and then double-clicking the tool to open the Move dialog box: You enter the desired horizontal (X) and vertical (Y) coordinates, or the distance from the current location and the angle of the new location from the existing one. 18_607169-ch10.indd 25718_607169-ch10.indd 257 4/22/10 7:53 PM4/22/10 7:53 PM Please purchase PDF Split-Merge on www.verypdf.com to remove this watermark. Part III: Object Fundamentals 258 l Selecting it with any of the selection tools, then choosing Object ➪ Transform ➪ Move or pressing Shift+Ô+M or Ctrl+Shift+M: You enter the desired horizontal (X) and vertical (Y) coordinates, or the distance from the current location and the angle of the new location from the existing one. l Changing the X and Y values in the Control panel or in the Transform panel: These values determine the distance between an object’s control point and the ruler’s zero point, where the horizontal and vertical rulers intersect (usually the upper-left corner of a page or spread). (If the Control panel is not open, activate it by choosing Window ➪ Control or pressing Option+Ô+6 or Ctrl+Alt+6. If you want to use the Transform panel, activate it by choosing Window ➪ Object & Layout ➪ Transform.) Figure 10.4 shows the Control panel and Transform panel and their controls. If you want, change the object’s control point — where the X and Y coordinates refer to. Each of the preceding methods for moving objects has its merits. The method you choose depends on how you prefer to work. Cross-Reference Chapter 1 explains how to set the control point. InDesign lets you move and copy entire pages between docu- ments, as described in Chapter 5. n FIGURE 10.4 The Control panel (top) and Transform panel (bottom) Creating Copies of Objects After you create something — a simple, rectangular frame or a complicated graphic made up of several dozen objects — InDesign makes it easy to reuse the original. InDesign provides many options for copying objects within documents as well as across them. 18_607169-ch10.indd 25818_607169-ch10.indd 258 4/22/10 7:53 PM4/22/10 7:53 PM Please purchase PDF Split-Merge on www.verypdf.com to remove this watermark. Chapter 10: Manipulating Objects 259 Copying objects within documents Here are your options for copying objects within a document: l Copy and Paste commands (choose Edit ➪ Copy or press Ô+C or Ctrl+C; choose Edit ➪ Paste or press Ô+V or Ctrl+V): Using these commands is a good choice if you have to copy something from one page to another. A great option is Paste in Place (choose Edit ➪ Paste in Place or press Option+Shift+Ô+V or Ctrl+Alt+Shift+V), which pastes an object in the same place as the original object. It’s very handy when copying an element from one page to another because it places the copy in the same location on the new page, saving you the effort of moving it. (When copying among documents, Paste in Place uses the same X and Y coordinates as the original.) Note When you paste an object in InDesign, it is pasted into the current spread displayed on screen. However, if you have even a few pixels of another spread showing at the top of your screen, the pasted object will be placed on that spread, not the one that takes up the bulk of your screen area. Thus, you may think the object didn’t actu- ally get pasted when in fact it was pasted in the spread above the one you’re focused on. n l Duplicate command (choose Edit ➪ Duplicate or press Option+Shift+Ô+D or Ctrl+Alt+Shift+D): The Duplicate command is quicker than using copy and paste. When you duplicate an object, the copy is placed one pica below and to the right of the original. Note InDesign offsets a duplicate by whatever settings are in the Step and Repeat dialog box or by the distance and direction of the last Option+drag or Alt+drag copying of an object — whichever was done last. n l Manual cloning: When you drag and drop an object while pressing and holding Option or Alt, a copy of the selected object is created. If you’re a drag-and-dropper, you may pre- fer this manual method to the Duplicate command. l Cloning with the transform tools: If you press and hold Option or Alt while using any of the transform tools (Rotate, Shear, Scale, and Free Transform), a copy of the selected object is transformed. The selected item remains unchanged. l Control panel and Transform panel cloning: If you press and hold Option or Alt when you exit the Control or Transform panels (by pressing Return or Enter or releasing the mouse after choosing an option from a menu), the transformation is applied to a copy of the selected item. l Step and Repeat command (choose Edit ➪ Step and Repeat or press Shift+Ô+U or Ctrl+Shift+U): Think of the Step and Repeat dialog box (shown in Figure 10.5) as the Duplicate command on steroids. It lets you create multiple duplicates of selected objects and specify the horizontal and vertical offset of the duplicates. Note that if the horizontal offset is 0, the copies have the same X coordinate as the original; if the Y offset is 0, the copies have the same Y coordinate. To avoid the copies overlapping the original object 18_607169-ch10.indd 25918_607169-ch10.indd 259 4/22/10 7:53 PM4/22/10 7:53 PM Please purchase PDF Split-Merge on www.verypdf.com to remove this watermark. Part III: Object Fundamentals 260 and each other, the horizontal offset needs to be at least as wide as the original object’s width, and the vertical offset needs to be at least as high as the original object’s height. Select Preview to see what the Step and Repeat dialog box’s settings do, to verify they’re set as you want, before clicking OK to make the copies. FIGURE 10.5 The Step and Repeat dialog box. Left: The standard version lets you specify how many copies to make and what horizontal and vertical distance each copy should be placed from the previous copy. Right: The grid- ify version of the dialog box, which lets you create a grid of copies of the original object all at once. This command is handy if you have to create, for example, a vertical and/or horizontal grid of lines on a page. Simply draw a horizontal line at the top of the page or a vertical line along the left edge of the page. With the line selected, use the Step and Repeat com- mand to place and evenly space as many additional lines as you need. Tip If you need to use an object or a group of objects repeatedly, storing them in a library is a good idea. After you place something in a library, you can drag-copy as many clones as you want into any document. (Chapter 7 covers libraries.) n The Step and Repeat dialog box adds a new capability: gridified step-and-repeat. If you select the Create as a Grid option, the dialog box lets you specify the number of rows and columns to contain the copies, as shown on the right in Figure 10.5. Imagine you are creating business cards, for which a letter- size sheet of paper holds ten cards, organized five deep and two wide. You would thus create one busi- ness card at the top left of the page, then use the Step and Repeat dialog box’s gridify capability to set two columns and five rows, with the horizontal spacing and vertical spacing both equaling the card’s width (that is, with no margin between the copies). You can also do a gridified step-and-repeat when copying an object with the mouse. Press and hold Option or Alt when dragging the original to make a copy, then release Option or Alt and press → to add columns of copies and/or ↑ to add rows of copies (press ← to remove columns and ↓ to remove rows). When you release the mouse, a grid of copies appears. (This works like the gridified frame-creation capability explained in Chapter 9.) New: Gridified Step-and-Repeat 18_607169-ch10.indd 26018_607169-ch10.indd 260 4/22/10 7:53 PM4/22/10 7:53 PM Please purchase PDF Split-Merge on www.verypdf.com to remove this watermark. Chapter 10: Manipulating Objects 261 Copying objects between documents Occasionally, you’ll want to use something you’ve created in one InDesign document in another document. For example, maybe you need an ad that ran in last month’s newsletter again for this month’s edition; or perhaps you created a small illustration for an ad that you want to use in a companion brochure. InDesign offers several options for moving objects between documents. You can: l Open the document that contains the objects you want to copy, select the objects, and then copy them to the Clipboard by choosing Edit ➪ Copy or pressing Ô+C or Ctrl+C. Open the target document and choose Edit ➪ Paste or press Ô+V or Ctrl+V, to place the copied objects. You can also choose Edit ➪ Paste in Place or press Option+Shift+Ô+V or Ctrl+Alt+Shift+V to paste the object at the same X and Y coordinates as the original. l If you need to use the objects in more than one document, you can copy them into a library, which lets you place as many copies as you want in any document. (Libraries are covered in Chapter 7.) l You can open the source document (the one that contains the objects) and the target doc- ument and drag-copy the objects from the source document to the target document. (Choose Window ➪ Arrange ➪ Float All in Windows and then choose Window ➪ Arrange ➪ Tile to display both document windows side by side; Chapter 2 covers working with multiple document windows in detail.) l A very easy way to share parts of your document is to select the desired objects and drag them out of your document window and onto the Mac or Windows desktop or into a folder. You can also choose File ➪ Export or press Ô+E or Crl+E and then choose InDesign Snippet from the Format pop-up menu (Mac) or Save as Type pop-up menu (Windows) in the Export dialog box to create snippets from selected objects. InDesign creates a file called a snippet file (with the file name extension .idms ) that contains all the objects, formatting, and position information. You or another person can drag the file onto an InDesign document to place the objects, with all formatting intact. Working with snippets is easy: Just drag objects from InDesign to the desktop or a folder to create the snippet file, and drag the snippet file onto a layout to place the objects on it. (You can also place the snippets the same as you can any other file by choosing File ➪ Place or pressing Ô+D or Ctrl+D.) However, don’t let that simplicity blind you to a couple of cool attributes of snippets: l You can send snippets to other users on storage drives, via e-mail, or over the network — as with any other file. l You can control where a snippet’s objects are placed in your document. Choose Original Location or Cursor Location in the Position pop-up menu in the Preferences dialog box’s File Handling pane (choose InDesign ➪ Preferences ➪ File Handling or press Ô+K on the Mac, or choose Edit ➪ Preferences ➪ File Handling or press Ctrl+K in Windows). The Cursor Location option means the objects are placed wherever you release the mouse when dragging the snippet. 18_607169-ch10.indd 26118_607169-ch10.indd 261 4/22/10 7:53 PM4/22/10 7:53 PM Please purchase PDF Split-Merge on www.verypdf.com to remove this watermark. Part III: Object Fundamentals 262 Note You can place — but not drag — snippets into text frames as inline graphics. n Deleting Objects There are several ways to delete objects in InDesign. Most people either have a favorite method or use one that’s easiest to adopt in their current state (such as using a mouse action to delete a frame when they’re using the mouse already to size frames). No matter what your preferred approach, be sure you select an object with the Selection tool. The methods are: l Choose Edit ➪ Cut or press Ô+X or Ctrl+X to cut objects; or choose the Cut command in the contextual menu you get when Control+clicking or right-clicking an object. l Choose Edit ➪ Clear or press Ô+Delete or Backspace to delete (clear) the object. l Drag the object to the Mac’s Trash or the Windows Recycle Bin; this clears the object. Note If you use the Direct Selection tool instead of the Selection tool for these deletion actions for a frame contain- ing a graphic, the graphic is removed from the frame but the frame itself remains. (By contrast, if you use the Selection tool, both the graphic and the frame are deleted.) n Note Cut objects can then be pasted elsewhere, at least until the time an object is cut or copied. Cleared objects cannot be pasted back. n Preventing Objects from Printing InDesign lets you prevent an object from printing. To do so, select the object, open the Attributes panel (choose Window ➪ Output ➪ Attributes), and then select the Nonprinting option. (The other settings in this panel control stroke settings, which Chapter 12 covers.) You would use this feature for comments and other elements that should not print but that you need to have visible on-screen. Another approach to nonprinting objects is to place them all on a layer and make the entire layer nonprinting. Cross-Reference Chapter 6 covers layers. Chapter 31 covers printing. n 18_607169-ch10.indd 26218_607169-ch10.indd 262 4/22/10 7:53 PM4/22/10 7:53 PM Please purchase PDF Split-Merge on www.verypdf.com to remove this watermark. Chapter 10: Manipulating Objects 263 Hiding Objects InDesign lets you hide objects in your layout, which also prevents them from printing. To hide an object, select it and choose Object ➪ Hide or press Ô+3 or Ctrl+3. To show hidden objects, choose Object ➪ Show All on Spread or press Option+Ô+3 or Ctrl+Alt+3. Caution You can show hidden objects only on the spread you are currently working on. There is no way to show all the hidden objects throughout your layout. How do you know the current spread has hidden objects? The Show All on Spread menu option is black (available) on spreads that have hidden objects, and grayed out (unavailable) on spreads that do not have hidden objects. n New Feature The ability to hide and show objects is new to InDesign CS5. n Aligning and Distributing Objects A key task in any layout is to make sure that objects are correctly aligned and spaced. However, that can be difficult to do precisely, given that designers tend to use the mouse to create and posi- tion objects; your hand-eye coordination is rarely exact for each and every object. InDesign provides four ways to make sure that objects are precisely aligned and spaced: l You can use the X, Y, W, and H coordinates in the Control panel or the Transform panel to specify the exact coordinates for every object. Just select an object and specify its coor- dinates in the panel. However, this often requires figuring out the math for the proper coordinates, which can be difficult, especially for visually oriented designers. l To take the math out of your hands, InDesign has the Align panel, which lets you align and distribute objects. The Align panel saves you the hassle of manually moving and plac- ing each element, or it figures out the correct coordinates for elements’ locations in the Control panel or Transform panel so that you can do so. The Align panel is where InDesign offers these timesaving capabilities. l You can use InDesign’s guides and the snap to capability to help ensure that manually placed items at least align to your desired X or Y coordinates, as Chapter 7 explains. l The smart-guides feature is particularly suited to visually oriented designers: It shows you on-screen — as you size, move, and rotate objects with the mouse — when the object you’re working with aligns to nearby objects and when it is spaced equidistantly to other nearby objects. This feature provides the precision you want while you are doing actual work, saving you from having to fix alignment and spacing after the fact, which is what you have to do when you use the Control, Transform, or Align panels. 18_607169-ch10.indd 26318_607169-ch10.indd 263 4/22/10 7:53 PM4/22/10 7:53 PM Please purchase PDF Split-Merge on www.verypdf.com to remove this watermark. Part III: Object Fundamentals 264 Working with the Align panel The Align panel (choose Window ➪ Object & Layout ➪ Align or press Shift+F7), shown in Figure 10.6, has several iconic buttons that let you manipulate the relative position of multiple objects in two ways. (The buttons show the alignments they provide.) FIGURE 10.6 The Align panel Tip The Align panel’s iconic buttons may also be available in the Control panel if you’ve selected multiple objects with the Selection tool, depending on how wide your screen is and how many buttons you’ve set the Control panel to display. (See Chapter 1 for how to customize the buttons it displays.) n With the Align panel, you can: l Line up objects along a horizontal or vertical axis. For example, if you’ve randomly placed several small graphic frames onto a page, you can use the iconic alignment buttons in the Align panel to align them neatly — either horizontally or vertically. l Distribute space evenly among objects along a horizontal or vertical axis. Here’s a typical problem easily solved by using this feature: You’ve carefully placed five small graphics on a page so that the top edges are aligned across the page, and there is equal space between each picture. Then you find out one of the graphics needs to be cut. After deleting the unneeded graphic, you could use the Align panel to redistribute the space among the remaining graphics so they’re again equally spaced. Note The Align iconic buttons don’t work with objects that have been locked with the Lock command. Also, if the objects are on a locked layer, you need to unlock the layer. (Chapter 13 covers locking. Chapter 6 covers layers.) n 18_607169-ch10.indd 26418_607169-ch10.indd 264 4/22/10 7:53 PM4/22/10 7:53 PM Please purchase PDF Split-Merge on www.verypdf.com to remove this watermark. [...]... live-distribution capability is new to InDesign CS5 n 265 Part III: Object Fundamentals Using the Measure Tool and Info Panel InDesign has two little-known methods to get dimension information about objects: the Measure tool and the Info panel Because so much information about object size and position resides in the Control panel, these methods are little used They’re more vestiges of InDesign s pre-Control panel... to Object Edges options (Choose InDesign ➪ Preferences ➪ Guides & Pasteboard or press Ô+K on the Mac, or choose Edit ➪ Preferences ➪ Guides & Pasteboard or press Ctrl+K in Windows.) Aligning to an object’s center tells InDesign to look for the centerpoint of other objects as you move or resize objects and use those as alignment targets Aligning to object frame edges has InDesign look for other objects’... transformations is up to you and is limited only by your imagination As always, discretion is advised Just because InDesign has some pretty cool features doesn’t mean that you should use them in every publication you create Note The changes in how the Selection tool works in InDesign CS5 (see Chapter 10) mean you won’t need to use the Free Transform, Rotate, or Scale tools very often, because you can... (with the Selection, Free Transform, Rotate, Shear, or Scale tools), you no longer must first group them InDesign CS5 simply applies the transformations to all the currently selected objects n The Transformation-Values Indicator As you resize, rotate, or otherwise transform an object using the mouse, InDesign typically displays a gray rectangle below and to the right of the mouse called the transformation-values... this menu option, InDesign adds up all rotation angles, scale values, and so on applied to an object as well as to any objects that contain the object For example, if you rotate a frame 30 degrees but rotate its contents –30 degrees, InDesign shows the content’s rotation as 0 degrees (30–30=0), its absolute rotation relative to the page But if Transformations Are Totals is not selected, InDesign reports... usually limited to special effects For all of these controls, InDesign offers multiple ways to achieve the desired transformation: menu options, tools, panels, and dialog boxes When you have a choice, pick whatever is most convenient at the moment IN THIS CHAPTER Resizing and scaling objects Rotating, shearing, and flipping objects Controlling how InDesign displays transformation values Repeating transformations... the Control or Transform panel may still show scale values of 100 percent InDesign has a control in the Preferences dialog box’s General pane to change that odd behavior, as Chapter 3 explains n Performing Other Transformations In addition to the essential mundane capabilities to move, copy, delete, resize, and scale objects, InDesign provides tools and several controls in the Control panel and Transform... at the bottom of the panel and you want to distribute objects, choose Show Options from the flyout menu or click the double-arrow icon to the left of the panel name n Working with live distribution InDesign CS5 lets you redistribute the spaces among objects as you drag the mouse using its livedistribution capability Normally when you select multiple objects and begin moving one of the control points... When smart spacing is on, InDesign looks at the relative spacing of nearby objects as you work with one and highlights when the spacing is the same, or close to being the same (in which case it moves them for you) A fourth smart feature option in the Smart Guides Options section of the Guides & Pasteboard pane: smart measurements In this case, as you resize or rotate objects, InDesign shows a smart guide... control point is selected (here, the upper-left corner) in the Control or Transform panel 279 Part III: Object Fundamentals New Feature The ability to rotate objects with the Selection tool is new to InDesign CS5 n Using the Rotate tool The Rotate tool is best used when you want to experiment with different angles quickly, or if you want to preview the rotation to see what looks right Here’s how: 1 Select . either selection button, InDesign jumps past four objects and selects the fifth one. If you Ô+click or Ctrl+click either button, InDesign selects the bottommost. complicated graphic made up of several dozen objects — InDesign makes it easy to reuse the original. InDesign provides many options for copying objects within