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Indesign scale incorrect.

Forum|Forum|3 years ago
December 23, 2022
6 replies
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When I preview my indesign document (A5 page size) at 100% the document is showing on screen at a size larger than a4. This is a problem as I need to know what the document will look like at actual size. The scaling was fine before the last update. I have the latest adobe CC updates and am running this on a windows 11 PC (also fully up to date) Any ideas?

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Correct answer rob day

A stupid question. How do I run this script? I have never used one before.

Many thanks.

Download from the link I posted and copy the file into your InDesign Scripts Panel folder:

⁨Applications⁩ ▸ ⁨Adobe InDesign 202X⁩ ▸ ⁨Scripts⁩ ▸ ⁨Scripts Panel⁩

Open your Scripts panel and it should be listed under Application—double-click to run. Your Custom Resolution should be the reported system resolution x .68.

Brad @ Roaring Mouse

Community Expert

Are you on a high-res monitor?

(you can tell because ID will grey-out the UI Scaling preference on normal "low-res' monitors)

So I did some tests on a Windows 10 machine. If the Display preferences for the machine have been changed, e.g. if you've set the scaling preference to something other than the (Recommended) 100%, like so:

... this affects how InDesign displays the rulers, as you are essentially just "zooming" Windows.

So, besides checking your UI Scaling orefence, you ALSO have to make sure the system preferences for Display are set properly.

rob day

Community Expert

Hi Brad, I think that’s why I don’t see the problem on OSX running CC2021. The Apple Display Preference allows me to change the interface size, but InDesign gets the new monitor resolution from the OS, and adjusts the 100% view:

If you leave the InDesign User Interface Scaling Preference at the smallest size (no change), but set the Windows scaling to 125%, do you get the enlarged 100% view in InDesign?

Brad @ Roaring Mouse

Community Expert

"If you leave the InDesign User Interface Scaling Preference at the smallest size (no change), but set the Windows scaling to 125%, do you get the enlarged 100% view in InDesign"

Yup. At least on my Win 10 monitor setup, which in my case is a normal 1600x1050 Acer, Beacuse it's a normal pitch monitor, UI Scaling is greyed out in Indesign, so it doesn't come into play, so it's solely the Windows sisplay scaling setting affecting the ruler accuracy.

Brad @ Roaring Mouse

Community Expert

Starting with CC2022, ID included the User Interface Scaling in Preferences. I remember when I installed that version, my UI items were larger on my Retina display than they were on CC2021. I checked the UI Scaling setting and it was set at the second step up:

This cause EVERYTHING to be larger, including the rulers, so viewing at 100% was incorrect.

If I instead set it to Small, which now matched my CC2021 experience, everything was back to being correct.

Of course, I'm on a Mac, but it's worth looking at this on your machine as well.

James Gifford—NitroPress

Legend

I think this is the key to the problems: if you scale the UI to something suitable for yourself (especially on large, extremely high-res monitors), the actual document display may not be anywhere near suitable. Adding one more function — zoom scaling — might even free up some aspects of UI scaling that were limited because of effects on doc scaling.

I do very much admire Adobe's modern interface, with scaling, overall color/brightness and endless customizability. Just one more toy, though, Santa... 🙂

rob day

Community Expert

Hi @TyBB , This has been coming up lately, I think only from Windows users.

Adobe changed the 100% view for InDesign to the actual print size view starting with CS6, but in order to display the print view accurately it has to get your main monitor’s metadata from the OS—the physical dimensions and the display’s pixel dimensions. If you are not getting a 100% print view ID is not getting the monitor specs from the OS.

There are some general preferences, which are not included in the UI, but are accessible via scripting. This gets my 27" iMac’s main monitor’s resolution—I have the display set at 3200x1800 pixels and my rulers display accurately.

alert("Main Monitor Resolution:\r"+ app.generalPreferences.mainMonitorPpi + " PPI")

If your OS is reporting the wrong resolution, you can also set a custom resolution via scripting. This would force 135 no matter what the OS reports:

app.generalPreferences.customMonitorPpi = 135;
app.generalPreferences.useCustomMonitorResolution = true;

.

James Gifford—NitroPress

Legend

My sense is that Windows long ago wandered away from any firm connection between monitor scale and actual display scale. Too many combinations of hardware, monitor, user preference, etc.

So all these methods of custom adjustment to the scale are the only route, I think.

rob day

Community Expert

I’m not sure if it’s happening for all Windows users? My understanding is InDesign asks for the EDID from the OS in order to set the 100% view to the print actual size.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extended_Display_Identification_Data

On OSX I can change my Display resolution preference setting and InDesign will detect the change—my rulers are accurate at the 100% view whether I set the resolution to 1600x900 or 3200x1800.

Mike Witherell

Community Expert

InDesign's View menu > Actual Size (since CS6 and later) displays the actual print size when you view at 100% by trying to figure out your monitor's resolution to display the physical print size. Further adding to confusion is that Windows can scale the screen to percentages like 150%, 200% etc. which is often used by folks with 4K monitors. And further further adding to the confusion is that now in InDesign preferences you can scale the user interface up larger. All of these features tend to make InDesign do unpredictable things. I find that View > Actual Size is really never correct on my Windows machine while being usually correct on my macbook pro. The simple script that James cites is an effective work-around.

Mike Witherell

James Gifford—NitroPress

Legend

ID needs a zoom factor adjustment that *should* work over/above/irrespective of all other settings. It seems as if it would be trivial to shift the zoom factors to a variable base.

But hey, everything is easy from over here in the cheap seats. 🙂

I think it's been decades since there were enough "standard" systems and setups for one scale to be even mostly useful.

Steve Werner

Community Expert

There's nothing in the latest updates to InDesign that would change how InDesign scales a page.

If this is happening to only one file, there could be corruption: Save the file as IDML (File > Save As > InDesign CS4 or Later [IDML]. Open the IDML to see if it's fixed.

If this is happening to all files, try restoring your InDesign preferences and caches:

https://www.rockymountaintraining.com/adobe-indesign-rebuilding-preferences-cache/

TyBBAuthor

Known Participant

Thanks for the reply, however I have tried the solutions you have detailed to no avail. I have also checked on other files, all the same. I have checked with another windows 11 user and found the same issue, so this may be a windows thing. The only way I can check the file at actual size is to output it to PDF which does show the file at correct page size.

While I still have the problem I would like to thank you for your assistance.