Placed file from Illustrator PDF changes position within ID when altered

[PeterD-NJ]

Hi all,
I have a problem that's been driving me crazy for years and just hit again today. My InDesign publication contains hundreds of Illustrator-generated PDF images that are resized as needed in InDesign and then descriptive text added on top. Day to day it's a good solution, but occasionally I'll find that I might need to do something to the Illustrator-generated PDF graphic. It might be as simple as adding a thicker stroke or moving a couple of handles to improve the look of a curve, etc. All very, very minor tweaks at this poing.

The problem occurs when I update the image within InDesign. If I change something in the middle of a drawing it's usually not a problem, but if I tweak a line or add a stroke (or remove a stroke) at the perhiphery of the drawing then when I update in InDesign the drawing will move, or worse, the scale will change ever-so-slightly. If it was a simple illustration that wouldn't be a problem, but with sometimes over 100 small text boxes on a page it becomes a nightmare.

Is there any way, either from within InDesign or Illustrator, to prevent this behaviour from occurring? When I place a file in InDesign and lock the image I need for it to stay in the same place. The slight movement isn't so bad, but the fact it re-scales can set me back hours, or days even. Any thoughts on what's going on and how to prevent this from happening in the future?

[Peter Spier]

I suspect this is due to your crop options when you place the file. My guess would be you are using Crop to Art Box which uses the samllest rectangle that will enclose all the actual art, and when you move something on the edge it will change that rectangle. You might have better luck if you define your artboard at a fixed size that is slightly larger than needed to hold the art, then use Trim as the crop option.

[PeterD-NJ]

I'm not entirely sure I understand this. My workflow is Control+D to place, drag an area that will be about the size I want and then move it into position. If it's not righ, which it often isn't, I'll use the direct selection tool and proportionally resize (enlarge or contract) until the needed part of the drawing fits into the frame. 

For example, today's problem drawing was 3-1/2" x 2-1/4", and the frame in InDesign it needed to fit inside was about 7" wide by 3" high, cropping out the bottom. It had already been placed last week, but I changed a stroke from 1 point to 0.75 points and the whole thing rescaled on me.

More egregious problems are on master drawings that are maybe 60" x 40" that I'm tiling into 8 x 10" frames on pages. Those can be a real headache.

[BobLevine]

Why not just place it and then scale it?

[Peter Spier]

When you place the file there's a checkbox to Show Import Options (or you can just hold down the shift key when you double click the filename or click OK) which is where you'll see the crop options.  It's a sticky setting, so it will stay the same until you change it.

[PeterD-NJ]

I'm still not understanding how this fixes the issue. What Bob suggested is exactly what I'm doing. I place the PDF, to get it close, fine-tune the frame's placement, and then rescale the contents.

But please re-read the original post here. This isn't a question about placing a and scaling a new drawing, it's about solving the problem of an already-placed drawing moving or re-scaling on its own in InDesign if I make a minor modification to the image in Illustrator.

This wouldn't be an issue if the Illustrator content was an image that just had a few words on top of it in InDesign. I could fix that in seconds. In this case it's a complex railway track map PDF, and InDesign is where I put text over each line, and nudge things down to the pixel level. Here's a very small sample. See how many text boxes there are. The underlying Illustrator drawing is just the track lines and nothing else.

[Scott Falkner · Accepted solution]

As I understand the problem, when you change some artwork in Illustrator and update the graphic in InDesign the artwork is cropped differently than it was. Either the artwork is a different size in Illustrator or has changed position on the artboard or the artboard has been adjusted.

The solution is to place the artwork in InDesign in a way that ignores the position and size of the artwork when cropping. To do that you need to select a different crop option when placing the artwork. You can do that by holding Shift when you place the art or by clicking Show Import Options in the place dialogue. There you can select layer visibility (which is probably not relevant to this issue) and select a crop option. In the image below I selected Trim, which is the size of the artboard. When the image is placed it will have excess white space because InDesign will treat the entire artboard as the image. I might decide to crop some of the whitespace out, but I know as long as I don't adjust the artboard the image will not be resized or moved unless I move it in Illustrator.

In the first example below I have edited my artwork in Illustrator but not yet updated the links in my InDesign file. The top image was placed cropped to the art. The bottom image was placed cropped to the trim. In the second image I have updated the artwork. InDesign saw the artwork has a larger bounding box so it scaled the artwork in the top image to fit the existing frame. In the bottom image the crop isn't changed because the artboard is still the same size.

   

You may need to re-place some or all of the images but if you use this place method the images won't change unexpectedly.

[PeterD-NJ]

That got it! Thanks to all for help. Cropping to trim definitely worked.

Now the big question is what to do about the 300 or so already-existing images. Should I just leave them alone until I have to change the Illustrator file and then re-import and move the InDesign elements one final time? Some aren't too horrible (only 20 or 30 affected elements on a page, others have 100-250 InDesign elements that have to be finagled to the pixel level, so you can see I'm not enthusiastic about having to mess with it more than I gotta <grin>.

[Peter Spier]

I'd do the fixing on an as-needed basis, myself, with the understanding that eventually youo'll need to fix them all.

[BobLevine]

You are not doing what I suggested. You are dragging a frame first. Don't do that; just click anywhere on the page. Then scale it.

[Brad @ Roaring Mouse]

Anything you do to the Illustrator files will generate a new bounding box that, depending on where the change is (as you've noticed), can make it slightly larger/smaller. Relinking a placed graphic of the same name is assumed to have the same dimensions as before, so ID will scale the graphic to fit the existing crop (width-wise) and/or move it to accommodate a new zero point.

If you deselect the Preferences > File Handling option "Preserve Image Dimesions When Relinking" it may work better for you. The file will keep the same scale, but will still potentially move relative to the new zero point in the Illustrator file.