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Inspiring
December 29, 2020
Question

Find all images that are larger than their frame

  • December 29, 2020
  • 5 replies
  • 1338 views

I seem to have accidentally, or on insert cropped a few of my images. All of them are cropped outside inDesign, so I want to make sure all images fit their frames and automatically spot those that don't. Is there a function for that?

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5 replies

rob day
Community Expert
Community Expert
December 30, 2020

All of them are cropped outside inDesign,

 

Why are you cropping outside of ID? The point of the image container frame is to allow easy cropping and scaling of the placed (or pasted) image without leaving the layout for edits. Pasted images are embedded with no reference to the original (there’s no link). A large document with many embedded images could easily bloat into multiple gigabytes.

Inspiring
December 30, 2020

Why would I save my images larger than they have to be? I don't embed images, I link to them, so I can easily exchange them.

rob day
Community Expert
Community Expert
December 30, 2020

Create one image and its caption, then I used copy paste,

 

You said you were pasting—unless the copy is a link from another ID doc, pasted images are embedded.

 

You leave them uncropped so you can change your mind and adjust the scale and cropping in the layout via the image’s scale or its parent container frame. When you export to PDF for printing the PDF bitmaps get cropped—with disk space running at $20 a terabyte the uncropped linked image costs nothing.

Community Expert
December 29, 2020

Hi Frederik,

you said, that you used InDesign the first time for this project.

May I ask what application you used before and why you switched to InDesign?

 

Regards,
Uwe Laubender

( ACP )

Inspiring
December 29, 2020

It was pretty lame, but in the beginning we used google docs, which was great for collab, but bad for automated features like image counting.

Then Latex, which I like, but I almost broke my brain over some minor details that could be achieved if I were just able to move a figure manually. After not finding a solution we switched to inDesign. Sole reason for the Adobe version (there is an Affinity equivalent) is that it supports epub.

In conclusion: Google Docs: Not meant for large scale, Latex: awesome, but hard to manage some details. inDesign: children's toy, but I hope it'll get the job done.

Here are some reasons why I can't take inDesign seriously:

 - The Conveyorbelt. Can't I just make one doc, store all my graphics and link them to the other docs? I have to use this incredibly cumbersome setup everytime I want to use my graphs in another document.
- No Comments for others and the ability to comment on them or mark as done.

- No math formular support.

- Synching styles between docs belonging to the same book is insane. I can't sync single styles and accidentally overwrite styles I changed in another doc.

- Can't wrap the first line of text around an image. Can't wrap the text of a table and the text around the same image.

- Can't place links to headings, need to create a text anchor for each one.

Just the first few reasons that come to mind, if I check my Skype history I'll find a ton more where I just thought: seriously? You are calling this professional?

Participating Frequently
December 30, 2020

Hello FrederikSt,

 

I am sorry that indesign is frustrating you. It has been built in a way that gives you a lot of power but... and there is a huge but it doesn't do any of the work for you out of the box. Most of things can be automated but you have to set up your document in a way to take advantage of it.

 

The Conveyorbelt. Can't I just make one doc, store all my graphics and link them to the other docs? I have to use this incredibly cumbersome setup everytime I want to use my graphs in another document.

You can do this. It's called CC Libraries. This is a palette you can drop all your graphs and images into and access them in other documents. These will be set up as a cloud library so you can access them any where. Find this under Windows > CC Libraries.


- No Comments for others and the ability to comment on them or mark as done.

Yah Indesign is a little late to this party. But if you export the document as PDF you can get others to comment on the pdf. After this using Windows > Comments > PDF Comments to import it into your document
Alternatively you can just use Windows > Comments > Review. This will allow you to publish your document online and make it public or private, giving access to other to comment on the document. This comments will automatically feed into your document review palette.

 

- No math formular support.

Out of the Box you are correct. But it does have access to a Javascript engine. Scripting can be setup to handle complex maths. Or Alternatively just do it in excel and import it in.

 

- Synching styles between docs belonging to the same book is insane. I can't sync single styles and accidentally overwrite styles I changed in another doc.

Indesign Styles are very powerful, but at the same time very complex. If you have a style called 'bob' in one document and a 'bob' in another that is different style, you copy across the content the new style will take over. In some ways if you don't know this it can come across very painful. But if you do know this it can be a very powerful tool. Recommendation would be if you need a set base with your styles make them, but any changes you deviate from them rename the style. ie Master_H1_Red.

That way you can track whats changed.

 

- Can't wrap the first line of text around an image. Can't wrap the text of a table and the text around the same image.

This should work. Maybe submit a image of this. Sounds like a bug.

A table is actually a type of text if you have a text wrapped image it'll push the table around and not the content.
I think this was decided as the best use case. However there seems to be a bug stopping content pasted in the table from wrapping.

 

- Can't place links to headings, need to create a text anchor for each one.

Table of contents can do this automatically and create a linkable ToC for you. This can be found in Layout > Table of Contents.

 

Community Expert
December 29, 2020

Hi Frederik,

to answer your question: No, there is no function to detect the ones.

Would be a wonderful feature request for InDesign's Preflight function.

 

Go to InDesign UserVoice and speak up:

https://indesign.uservoice.com/forums/601021-adobe-indesign-feature-requests

 

Note: Some years ago Marc Autret did a wonderful article about the issue to detect frames where the contents does not fill the frames entirely. There you will find some code that could be the basis for a scripting solution:

 

2/ Graphics and Geometry
Does My Container Extend Beyond Its Inner Image Frame?

by Marc Autret

https://www.indiscripts.com/post/2016/12/indesign-scripting-forum-roundup-10#hd2

 

Regards,
Uwe Laubender

( ACP )

Inspiring
December 29, 2020

I might do that, but I hope never to have to touch this mess of a program again. Check my other questions about reaaally basic stuff that required hacks, workarounds and often got no answers at all.
Sorry for the rant but every other click I think: Has any of the devs actually used this program for a book?

John Mensinger
Community Expert
Community Expert
December 29, 2020

It may be possible to script "detection" (and perhaps correction) of ill-fitting frames, but I couldn't help with that.

Using Find/Change > Object, you could find image frames with no auto-fit settings and apply auto-fit; you'd just have to decide whether you want to auto-refit the images to the frames or auto-refit the frames to the images.

Participating Frequently
December 29, 2020

This is a much better option than what I suggested. This'll allow for you to go through one by one if you require.

Participating Frequently
December 29, 2020

Hello FrederikST

The only way I can think of outside of scripting would be; Open up object style pallette. If you haven't assigned an object style select [Basic Graphis Frame] then open up its options. If you then go to its fitting options you'll be able to globly assign the images to fit to frame.

However this will apply to every image.