Scale image to absolute percentage

Question

I'm assembling panels of multiple images in Illustrator CS5. The images are similar, but of slightly different sizes, therefore I put each image in a clipping mask, so the final sizes of clipped images are the same, so they can be arranged in a grid. The magnification of the images should be exactly the same, for example, I scale all the images to 5% and then I put them in a clipping mask.

I've made a grid of 2 x 2 images and then reused this grid, to put a different set of images inside the clipping masks. The four images in the initial grid were scaled to 5%, but when I relink an image inside the clipping mask and choose a different one, the scaling changes - as seen in this screenshot to 4.708% for this particular image:

So my question is: is it possible to re-scale the image(s) to exactly 5%? I tried Object-Transform-Scale, but the initial value is always 100%, so I would have to calculate percentage for each image separately, like 5/4.708*100% for the one in the screenshot. Is it possible to use an absolute scaling percentage for image transformation?

aleskl · Accepted Answer

Maybe InDesign will give you more control over fitting, cropping images.

Hi Ton,

the frame fitting options are not a solution - it will only fit or fill the frame, you don't have control over scaling of the object. But it is InDesign that is the solution, so thank you for pointing me in this direction.

So the solution for absolute scaling of objects (inside a clipping mask) is to do it in InDesign:

I have an image placed inside a rectangular clipping mask (the mask is defining the final printing size of the image). I need to arrange several images together, all of them should be printed at the same size AND the same magnification (this can be expressed as effective PPI). The source images are of slightly different sizes, so when I want to replace (relink) an image with a different image, the PPI will change, because the new images will be fit in size of the container of the old image. The scaling percentage will change, as seen below (the absolute image scaling factor should be 5%, the effective PPI should be 1440):

I can access the image inside the clipping mask by double-clicking it two times (1. to select the image container, 2. to select the image itself). The image will appear in an orange selection rectangle and the absolute scaling will be visible in the ribbon (marked with a red box). Here I can replace the values with 5% and I have a perfectly correct magnification for the new image also:

I wish Illustrator would have this extra control over the scaling of objects, but if it can be done in Indesign it's fine too.

Cheers and thank you all for your input!

augustr · Answer

I only have CC so that's all I can speak to, but in CC (and perhaps older versions) there is an option to do just this.

In the links panel, highlight the link you want to change the setting for, and click on the "additional options" button in the upper right of the panel (the three horizontal lines). Click on "Placement Options", and voila! The resulting panel gives you a number of ways to fix this problem from a drop-down.

Hope this helps.

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