Adobe InDesign CS/CS2 Breakthroughs [Electronic resources] نسخه متنی

Other Transform Oddities

Master Your Proxies

When I use the Scale or Rotate tool or those fields in the Control palette, I'm never exactly sure what's about to happen. Will the object rotate from the center or from a corner? Will the Scale tool grow the object up and to the right, or down and to the left? It usually takes me at least three tries to get it right.

Ex-QuarkXPress users are constantly challenged by the subtlties of the reference point (also called "proxy"). Except for the Free Transform tool, all the transform tools and related palette fields rely on the selected point in the proxy, which lives at the far left of the Control palette, and in the top left corner of the Transform palette. This point tells them where to transform from.

The routine is this: Select the object, click a reference point in the proxy, then use a Transform tool or field to transform the object. For example, if you select the upper left hand point on the proxy icon, and enter a number in the Rotation field; the object rotates by that amount, but its upper left-hand corner stays put.

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You can change the reference point using keyboard shortcuts by pressing Command/Ctrl-6 (to jump to the first field of the Control palette), then pressing Shift-Tab (to change the focus to the proxy icon). Now use the arrow keys or the numeric keypad to select a point. For example, the "9" key on the keypad selects the upper-right corner of the proxy. Press Enter to leave the palette and keep working.

The Scale, Rotate and Shear transform tools will honor an object's selected proxy point as well, but they give you more control over it. In addition to the 9 proxy points available in the proxy icon, you can set a reference point anywhere on the object. Just click the transform tool right on the object, exactly where you'd like the transform to "happen" from. You'll see a little non-printing icon jump to that position. Now drag the transform tool (or enter a transform amount in its equivalent palette field) and the object transforms from/around that custom proxy point.

Rotate The Drop Shadows

Rotating an object to which I've applied a drop shadow (Object > Drop Shadow) doesn't rotate the shadow. I have to open the Drop Shadow dialog box to change the settings to match the rotation.

Technically, InDesign is correct: It shouldn't rotate the drop shadow. Imagine a virtual light source casting a shadow on your object. You've already set the angle and position of the light source when you first made your drop shadow settings size, offset and blur. Just because the object is rotated X degrees doesn't mean the light source changes, does it? It would be kind of weird if it did.

Still, you're the boss. If you want the shadow to follow the rotation of the object, the only way that we know of is to move your shadowed object to a new, blank page; export just that page to PDF (File > Export), and then use File > Place to place the PDF in the original location of the object, cropping it as necessary. Now you can rotate the PDF and the shadow will rotate with it.

Transform a Copy

There's no "Copy" button in the Control or Transform palette. To scale, rotate, skew or move a copy of an object (leaving the original in place), do I have to select the object, choose Edit > Copy, then Edit > Paste in Place, and run the transform on the pasted copy? That's a lot of steps for what should be a simple operation.

There's an easier way! It's your friend the Option/Alt key. Select the object, then hold down the Option/Alt key after you start dragging with one of the transform tools to create a transformed copy. Or edit any field in the Transform or Control palette and then press Option/Alt-Enter. When InDesign's spidey-sense detects the Option/Alt key, it does what you want (the transform) to a copy of the selected object.

By the way, InDesign does have the Copy button you're looking for: It's in each of the Transform tools' options dialog boxess. Double-click the Scale, Rotate or Shear tools to see it (Figure 6-11).

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If you want to perform the same transformation on more than one object, InDesign CS2 has just the ticket: Transform Again which you can find under the Object > Transform Again submenu (or press Command-Option-3/Ctrl-Alt-3). Or, if you have transformed an object in more than one way (such as scaling, and rotated, and shearing), you can choose Transform Sequence Again (Command-Option-4/Ctrl-Alt-4).

Fix Fills of Overlapping Paths

Adobe Illustrator and Macromedia Freehand let you specify that a path that intersects itself multiple times (like a five- or six-pointed star) should be filled with either the "winding rule" or the "even-odd" rule. InDesign only offers the winding rule, so the middle of the star is always filled. How do I switch to the even-odd rule?

Leave it to InDesign über-mensch Olav Martin Kvern to figure this obscure one out. First, copy the path and paste it in place (using Edit > Paste in Place). Next, select both the original and the duplicate (both are on top of each other), and choose Object > Pathfinder > Add (or click the Add button in the Pathfinder palette). That's all it takes. Olav adds, in his inimitable deadpan, "It's mathematically obvious when you think about what the Add path operation does."