How do I crop an image in InDesign?

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I know there must be a way to do this, but for the life of me I can't find a crop tool.

Community Expert

Her are two similar fitting options. Fit Content Proportionally puts the entire image into the frame, but may leave some blank area (and you can easily remove this by using Fit Frame to Content). Fill Frame Proportionally useas as much of the image as possible without leaving any blank space, so it may crop. You can re-position inside the frame if you want a different crop.

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Walker322831261hp6

Participant

How do I resize and crop images proportionally in InDesign while maintaining image quality? OR, Can someone share tips on cropping images for different output formats (e.g., print, web) within InDesign?

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Peter Spier

Community Expert

Any time you resize an image in Indesign, whether or not you crop it, you change the effective resolution. Whether this will have an adverse effect on the output is entirely dependent on the resulting effective resolution, the image content and how it is used in the document (lots of things don't need to be sharp in a background, for example, so a lower resolution might be OK) and the output method. There is no one-size answer.

If you have other questions about this, please start a new thread.

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Spenno

Inspiring

Think of any photo you place in InDesign as being two objects - the photo itself, and the frame it is in. If you choose the top tool (Selection Tool) you will select the frame. If you select the next tool down (Direct Selection Tool) you will select the image. Even quicker, double-click on the frame to select the frame's content.

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nyharp

Participant

What you have to wind up doing is right click>edit with> (Photoshop or Illustrator). I'm assuming you mean to crop an image so that the data of a much larger image isn't still present. A crop tool within inDesign is absolutely needed. If you need to peace out an image it's now easy to do so to a .pdf in Adobe Acrobat, but it would be easier to do so right within inDesign. Not being able to do so leaves large amounts of unneeded data that causes the program to slow, problems during printing, and issues with file transfers. If I had the ability to crop an image I could turn an ad that is 1gb to 200mb real quick instead of having to use 2 to 3 separate programs to do so.

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rob day

Community Expert

You can post a feature request, but I wouldn't bet on it happening. I don't know of any publication that doesn't take PDF where you have the option to crop on export. With disk space running at $25 a terabyte cropping the original doesn't have much value and has the downside of permanently lost data.

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John Mensinger

Community Expert

You won't find a crop tool because it isn't needed. Every image placed on an InDesign page is automatically (or otherwise) placed in a frame. The frame is by default, independent of the image. To crop, simply reduce the size of the frame.

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Lara M TAuthor

Known Participant

Thanks. I get it now. My problem (or what I thought was a problem) was that the content wasn't filling the frame. But I want it to remain proportionate, so I used Fit Content Proportionately. If it's proportionate, it won't fill my large frame.

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Peter Spier

Correct answer

Community Expert

Her are two similar fitting options. Fit Content Proportionally puts the entire image into the frame, but may leave some blank area (and you can easily remove this by using Fit Frame to Content). Fill Frame Proportionally useas as much of the image as possible without leaving any blank space, so it may crop. You can re-position inside the frame if you want a different crop.

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