Tagged: frame

Resize an Adobe InDesign image Frame with this quick shortcut

When you have a large image placed inside a small Adobe InDesign Frame and you want to resize the Frame to show the entire image, there’s no reason to do it manually. As with so many of InDesign’s features, there’s a handy shortcut to do the job for you.

Frame resizing in Adobe InDesign

A simple double-click will resize an image frame in a variety of ways

Simply select the Frame your cropped image resides in and double-click any corner Frame Handle to quickly resize the frame to fit the entire image placed in it. If you don’t want the entire Frame enlarged, but want the full width of the image to show, double-click one of the side Frame Handles. And of course, if you want to keep the width of the Frame intact, but resize it to display the full height of the image, double-click either the top or bottom Frame Handles to do that.

As you can see in the image above, the photo Frame on the left is cropped, but double-clicking on the Frame Handle on the side resized the Frame to show the full width of the image I have placed inside it.

Save time by dragging files to an empty frame in InDesign

Did you know that you can drag a graphic, photo, PDF or text file onto an empty frame in Adobe InDesign from the OSX Finder or Adobe Bridge and InDesign will fill that frame with the file you dragged. Not only does this feature save you the time of sizing the placed item once it’s in your document (because you already have that frame sized correctly, right?), but it can save you dozens of clicks in a navigation box if you already have the folder with those graphics and text files open in the Finder. You can also drag files from the Finder to InDesign without having an empty frame in your document, but InDesign just places them at 100% size in your document. This option is great if you don’t know where exactly you’re going to place the images just yet or what size you’re going to make them, but you want to see what they look like for comparison in your layout.