Organizing Objects
In This Chapter
ᮣ Grouping and ungrouping objects
ᮣ Locking and unlocking objects
ᮣ Changing the stacking order of objects
ᮣ Working with object styles
ᮣ Managing links to graphics and text files
You use objects throughout your layout: lines, text frames, graphics frames, shapes, and so on. A big part of working with them involves organizing them — deciding when to group them together, when to lock them in location, how to arrange objects with others, and so on. That’s where this chapter comes in.
I also discuss a powerful new feature called object styles that lets you save object attributes. Finally, I show you how to manage objects’ relations with their source files, so that you can make sure that you’re using the correct version of your graphics and text.
Combining Objects into a Group
Groups have many uses. For example, you can create a group to
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Combine several objects that make up an illustration so that you can move, modify, copy, or scale all objects in a single operation. ߜ
Keep a graphics frame and its accompanying caption (text) frame together so that you can reposition both objects at once if you change your mind about their placement.
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Combine several vertical lines that are used to separate the columns of a table so that you can quickly change the stroke, color, length, and position of all lines.
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InDesign lets you combine several objects into a group. A group of objects behaves like a single object, which means that you can cut, copy, move, or modify all the objects in a group in a single operation.
To create a group, select all the objects (which can include other groups) that you want to include in your group and then choose Object➪Group (Ô+G
or Ctrl+G).
Keep in mind the following when creating groups:
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If you create a group from objects on different layers, all objects are moved to the top layer and stacked in succession beneath the topmost object.
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You can’t create a group if some of the selected objects are locked and some aren’t locked. All selected objects must be locked or unlocked before you can group them. (Locking and unlocking objects are covered in the following section.)
If you want to manipulate a group, choose the Selection tool and then click any object in the group. The group’s bounding box appears. Any transformation you perform is applied to all objects in the group. If you want to manipulate a specific object in a group, use the Direct Selection tool to select that object. If you want to change something that requires the Selection tool to be active, switch to it by selecting the Selection tool or simply by double-clicking the object. (See Chapter 8 for more details on selecting objects.)
If you remove an object applied (via cut and paste or copy and paste) from a group that had transparency, that pasted object will not retain the group’s transparency settings.
After creating a group, you may eventually decide that you want to return the objects to their original, ungrouped state. To do so, simply click any object in the group with the Selection tool and then choose Object➪Ungroup (Shift+Ô+G or Ctrl+Shift+G). If you ungroup a group that contains a group, the contained group isn’t affected. To ungroup this group, you must select it and choose Ungroup again.
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Locking Objects
If you’re certain that you want a particular object to remain exactly where it is, you can select Object➪Lock Position (Ô+L or Ctrl+L) to prevent the object from being moved. Generally, you want to lock repeating elements such as headers, footers, folios, and page numbers so that they’re not accidentally moved. (Such repeating elements are usually placed on a master page; you can lock objects on master pages, too.)
A locked object can’t be moved whether you click and drag it with the mouse or change the values in the X: and Y: fields in the Control panel or Transform panel. Not only can you not move a locked object, but you can’t delete it, either. However, you can change other attributes of a locked object, including its stroke and fill.
To unlock a selected object, choose Object➪Unlock Position (Option+Ô+L or Ctrl+Alt+L).
You can also lock entire layers, as described in Chapter 4.
Working with Object Styles
Object styles let you organize your settings so that you can apply them to other objects for consistent, easy formatting.
I suspect that object styles are underappreciated and underused, rarely used in real-world documents. That’s a pity, because the use of styles for object formatting — not just text formatting — makes your work easier by automatically and reliably applying time-consuming settings to multiple objects and ensuring that your object formatting is both consistent and easily managed. Creating object styles
You create object styles by using the Object Styles panel (Window➪Object Styles [Ô+F7 or Ctrl+F7]) and selecting New Object Style from the flyout menu, shown in Figure 9-1. You can also click the New Object Style iconic button at the bottom of the panel.
The simplest way to create an object style is to select an already-formatted object with any selection tool and then choose New Object Style from the Object Styles panel’s flyout menu. InDesign records all the settings automatically from the selected object so that they’re in place for the new object style.
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Figure 9-1:
The Object
Styles panel
and its flyout menu.
Create New Style Group
Delete Selected Style
Clear Overrides
Create New Style
Clear Attributes Not Defined by Style
Whether you start with an existing object or create a new object style completely from scratch, you use the New Object Style menu option that opens the New Object Style dialog box shown in Figure 9-2.
At the left side of the dialog box is a list of types of attributes that are or can be set. The checked items are in use for this style — you can uncheck an item so that InDesign doesn’t apply its settings to objects using the style. For example, if Fill is unchecked, the object style won’t apply any Fill settings to objects using that style (and won’t change any fill settings that have been applied to that object locally).
To switch from one type of attribute to another, simply click the item name for the type of attribute that you want to adjust, such as Stroke or Transparency.
Be sure to select the Preview option to see the results of object styles on the currently selected object. Of course, you need to make sure that the object is visible on-screen to see those effects.
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Figure 9-2:
The New
Object
Style dialog
box and its
General
pane.
When you open the New Object Style dialog box, you see the General pane, which lets you create a new style based on an existing object style (by using the Based On pop-up menu), and which lets you assign a keyboard shortcut for fast application of this style (by using the Shortcuts field). You can use the Based On feature to create families of object styles. For example, you can create a style called Photo-Standard for the bulk of your placed photographs and then create variations, such as Photo-Sidebar and Photo-Author. The Photo-Standard style might specify a hairline black stroke around the photo, while Photo-Sidebar may change that to a white stroke. But if you later decide you want the stroke to be 1 point and change it in Photo-Standard, Photo-Sidebar automatically gets the 1-point stroke while retaining the white color.
The General pane also lets you see the current style settings. Click any of the arrows in the Style Settings section to get more details on how they’re set for this object style.
The other panes in the New Object Styles dialog box provide the same capabilities that you find elsewhere in InDesign, brought into one convenient place so that you can use them in styles. Because it has so many panes, the New Object Style dialog box now breaks them into two sections. The first section — Basic Attributes — contains the following panes:
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The Fill pane lets you set colors for fills using whatever colors are defined in the Swatches panel. You can also set the tint and, if you select a gradient fill, the angle for that gradient. Finally, you can choose to have the fill overprint the contents of the frame by selecting the Overprint Fill option.
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The Stroke pane is identical to the Fill pane except that options specific to fills are grayed out, and options available to strokes are made available. The color, tint, and gradient angle options are the same as for the Fill pane. You can also choose the type of stroke (solid line, dashed line, or dotted line) by using the Type pop-up menu and adjust the thickness by filling in the Weight field. You can choose to overprint the stroke over underlying content, plus determine — if your stroke is a dotted or dashed line — the color, tint, and overprint for the gap.
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The Stroke & Corner Options pane lets you set stroke position and how corners and line ends are handled. It also lets you apply fancy corners to frames. The Stroke Options section is where you align the strokes to the frame edges, determine how lines join at corners, and decide what line endings are applied. The Corner Options section is where you select from five fancy corners, such as Bevel and Rounded, by using the Effect pop-up menu, and where you specify the radius, or reach, of the corner by using the Size field. (See Chapter 7 for the low-down on strokes and Chapter 8 for the skinny on corner options.)
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The Paragraph Styles pane controls what paragraph style, if any, is applied to text in the frame. Chances are you won’t use this setting except for frames that contain only consistent, very simple text, such as pull-quotes or bios. (See Chapter 11 for details.)
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The Text Frame General Options pane controls how text is handled within a frame. This pane essentially replicates the controls in the General pane of the Text Box Options dialog box (Object➪Text Frame Options [Ô+B or Ctrl+B]), including number of columns, column width, gutter settings, inset spacing (how far from the frame edge text is placed), vertical justification (how text is aligned vertically in the frame), and whether text wrap settings are ignored when this frame overlaps other frames. (See Chapter 11 for details.)
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The Text Frame Baseline Options pane controls how text is handled within a frame. This pane essentially replicates the controls in the Baseline Options pane of the Text Box Options dialog box (Object➪Text Frame Options or Ô+B or Ctrl+B), including how the text baseline is calculated for the frame and whether the text frame gets its own baseline grid. (See Chapter 10 for details.)
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The Story Options pane enables optical margin alignment — its controls are the same as in the Story panel (Type➪Story), detailed in Chapter 16. Optical margin alignment adjusts the placement of text along the left side of a frame so that the text alignment is more visually pleasing. ߜ
The Text Wrap & Other pane lets you set text wrap, mirroring the features of the Text Wrap panel (Window➪Text Wrap [Option+Ô+W or Ctrl+Alt+W]), explained in Chapter 16, as well as make an object nonprinting (normally handled through the Attributes panel by choosing Window➪Attributes).
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The Anchored Object Options pane lets you set the attributes for inline and anchored frames, mirroring the controls in the Anchored Object Options dialog box (Object➪Anchored Object➪Options), which I explain in Chapter 10.
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The Frame Fitting Options pane lets you set the defaults for how frames fit to the graphics and text placed in them, mirroring the controls in the Frame Fitting Options dialog box (Object➪Fitting➪Frame Fitting Options), as explained in Chapter 18.
The second set of panes all relate to the features found in the Effects dialog box and panel, as covered in Chapter 8.
Managing object styles
The Object Styles panel’s flyout menu (refer to Figure 9-1) has several options for managing object styles:
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Duplicate Object Style: Click an object style’s name and then choose this menu option to create an exact copy. If you want to create an object style that’s similar to one you already created, you may want to choose New Object Style rather than Duplicate Object Style and then use the Based On option to create a child of the original. If you choose Duplicate Object Style, the copy is identical to, but not based on, the original; if you modify the original, the copy isn’t affected.
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Delete Style: Choose this option to delete selected object styles. To select multiple styles, press and hold Ô or Ctrl as you click their names. To select a range of styles, click the first one and then press and hold Shift and click the last one. You can also delete styles by selecting them in the pane and then clicking the Delete Selected Styles iconic button (the trashcan icon) at the bottom of the panel.
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Redefine Style: To modify an existing object style, first make changes to an object that already has an object style defined for it and then select Redefine Style. The newly applied formats are applied to the object style. ߜ
Style Options: This option lets you modify an existing object style. When a style is highlighted in the Object Styles panel, choosing Style Options displays the Object Style Options dialog box, which is identical to the New Object Style dialog box.
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Load Object Styles: Choose this option if you want to import object styles from another InDesign document. After selecting the document from which to import the styles, you get a dialog box listing the styles in the chosen document so that you can decide which ones to import. Note the Incoming Style Definitions window at the bottom of the dialog box; it lists the style definitions to help you decide which to import, as well as which to overwrite or rename.
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InDesign comes with three predefined object styles — [Basic Text Frame],
[Basic Graphics Frame], and [Basic Grid] — that you can modify as desired. Applying object styles
After you create an object style, it’s a simple process to apply it: Just click an object and then click the object style name in the Object Styles panel or press its keyboard shortcut. (Windows users must make sure that Num Lock is on when using shortcuts for styles.)
You can set which object styles are automatically used for new text and graphics frames: In the Object Styles panel’s flyout menu, choose Default Text Frame Style and select the desired style from the submenu to set a default text frame; choose Default Graphic Frame Style and select the desired style from the submenu to set a default graphics frame. To no longer have object styles automatically applied to new objects, choose [None] in the Default Text Frame and/or Default Graphic Frame submenus.
When you apply an object style to selected objects, all local formats are retained. All other formats are replaced by those of the applied style — that is, unless you do one of the following:
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If you press and hold Option or Alt when clicking a name in the Object Styles panel, any local formatting that has been applied to the objects is removed. You can achieve the same effect by choosing Clear Attributes Not Defined by Style from the Object Styles panel’s flyout menu or by clicking the Clear Attributes Not Defined by Style iconic button at the bottom of the Object Styles panel.
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If you want to override any local changes with the settings in the object style, choose Clear Overrides in the flyout menu or click the Clear Overrides iconic button at the bottom of the Object Styles panel. The difference is that Clear Attributes Not Defined by Style removes all attributes for which the object style contains no settings, whereas Clear Overrides imposes the object style’s settings over conflicting attributes that you set manually.
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To have InDesign automatically override local changes when applying a style, be sure the Clear Overrides When Applying Style flyout menu option is checked. Choosing the item toggles between selecting (checking) and deselecting (unchecking) this option.
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If a plus sign (+) appears to the right of an object style’s name, it means that the object has local formats that differ from those of the applied object style. This formatting difference can occur if you apply an object style to object text to which you’ve done some manual formatting, or if you modify formatting for an object after applying an object style to it. (For example, you may have changed the fill color, which is a local change to the object style and causes the + to appear.)
To remove a style from an object, choose Break Link to Style from the Object Styles panel’s flyout menu. The object’s current formatting won’t be affected, but it will no longer be updated when the object style is changed. Managing object styles
InDesign also lets you manage your styles, such as creating groups of styles to make it easier to find relevant ones, and bring in styles from other documents. Because these features work the same for paragraph, character, table, and cell styles as well, I cover these features in one place: Chapter 13. Managing Links
The Links panel (Window➪Links [Shift+Ô+D or Ctrl+Shift+D]) is a handy place to manage the links to your graphics and text, particularly when you need to update them.
Figure 9-3 shows the Links panel. If you’ve used previous versions of InDesign, note how different the Links panel is in InDesign CS4 — Adobe’s given it a major overhaul.
InDesign always creates links for graphics files. But it creates links to source text files (including spreadsheets) only when the Create Links When Placing Text and Spreadsheet Files option is checked in the File Handling pane of the Preferences dialog box (InDesign➪Preferences➪File Handling [Ô+K] on the Mac, or Edit➪Preferences➪File Handling [Ctrl+K] in Windows). This option is not checked by default because many designers don’t want text files easily updated in their layouts. That’s because all the formatting they’ve done to the file in InDesign is removed when the link to the source file is updated, causing the text to be replaced. (Note that this option has moved from the Type pane of the Preference dialog box, where it resided in previous versions of InDesign.) 15_388488-ch09.indd 163
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The first four sets of commands in the Links panel’s flyout menu let you reestablish links to missing and modified files, display an imported graphic or text file in the document window, open the program used to create a graphic or text file, and work on copies and versions of the source graphics and text: Go To Link
Modified file indicator
Update Link
Missing file indicator
Sort Order
Figure 9-3:
The Links
panel and
its flyout
menu. Note
the icons
that indicate
missing and
modified
source files.
Show/Hide Item Information
Edit Original
Link Status Summary Relink
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Relink: This command, and the Relink iconic button (at the bottom of the panel), lets you reestablish a missing link or replace the original file you imported with a different file. When you choose Relink or click the button, the Relink dialog box is displayed and shows the original pathname and filename. You can enter a new pathname and filename in the Location field, but clicking Browse is easier, which opens a standard Open a File dialog box. Use the controls to locate and select the original file or a different file and then click OK. (You can also drag and drop a file icon from the Mac OS Finder or Windows Explorer directly into the Relink dialog box.) If you want to restore broken links to multiple files simultaneously, highlight their filenames in the scroll list and then choose Relink or click the Update Link button.
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Previous versions of InDesign let you relink all instances of a file in your layout, so you only have to do the operation once. InDesign CS4 changes how relinking works: Be sure to hold Option or Alt when clicking the Relink command or Relink iconic button. Also, InDesign is now smarter about finding missing files when you open a file; if the Find Missing Links Before Opening Document option is enabled in the File Handling pane of the Preferences dialog box, InDesign CS4 searches your drives for the files and automatically updates them if it finds them.
ߜ Relink to Folder: This new command lets you relink multiple files at the same time, and even change the type of graphic files to use at the same time. First, be sure to select all files in the panel you want to relink —
only selected files will be updated. Then choose this option and navigate to the folder that has the files. If the filenames in the new folder match the filenames of the selected files in the panel, InDesign updates them. (It leaves alone any it can’t find.)
Notice that the Open a File dialog box that appears when you choose this command contains an option called Match This Filename But This Extension. Say that someone gave you JPEG files as placeholders for your layout and then delivered the final TIFF files for high-quality print output. In previous versions, you’d have to relink every single file manually. Now, you can use this option and enter TIFF (or TIF, depending on the filename extension used) to substitute the high-quality TIFF files for the original low-quality JPEG files. That’s a real timesaver! (Note that the new file can be any format supported by InDesign, not just TIFF.) ߜ
Update Link: Choose this option or click the Update Link iconic button (at the bottom of the panel) to update the link to a modified graphic or text file. Highlight multiple filenames and then choose Update Link or click the Update Link button to update all those links at once.
ߜ Update All Links: Choose this option to update all files marked as modified, without having to select individual files.
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Go to Link: Choose this option or click the Go to Link iconic button (second from left) in the panel to display the highlighted file in the document window. InDesign will, if necessary, navigate to the correct page and center the frame in the document window.
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Embed Link (for graphics only): This option lets you embed the complete file of any imported graphics file. (InDesign normally imports only a low-resolution screen preview when you place a graphic that is 48K or larger.) If you want to ensure that the graphics file will forever remain with a document, you can choose to embed it — however, by embedding graphics, you’ll be producing larger document files, which means it will take you longer to open and save them. If you do use this option, an alert appears to inform you about the increased document size that will result. Click Yes to embed the file. Note that this menu option changes to Unembed File, so you can re-enable the original link at any time. 15_388488-ch09.indd 165
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Unlink (for text files only): This option removes the link to the source text file, so it can’t be updated. Note that you can’t undo this option from the Links panel; you have to choose Edit➪Undo (Ô+Z or Ctrl+Z). And this option is available only if you enabled text linking via the Create Links When Placing Text and Spreadsheet Files option in the File Handling pane of the Preferences dialog box.
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Edit Original: If you want to modify an imported graphic or text file, choose Edit Original from the flyout menu or click the Edit Original button (far right) at the bottom of the panel. InDesign tries to locate and open the program used to create the file, which may or may not be possible, depending on the original program, the file format, and the programs available on your computer.
ߜ Edit With: This new menu option lets you choose what program to edit a select object with.
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Reveal in Finder (Macintosh) and Reveal in Explorer (Windows): This menu option opens a window displaying the contents of the folder that contains the source file, so you can perhaps move, copy, or rename it. (The Reveal in Bridge option is a similar feature for the expert Adobe Bridge companion program not covered in this book.)
When you relink missing and update modified graphics, any transformations — rotation, shear, scale, and so on — that you’ve applied to the graphics or their frames are maintained, unless you’ve deselected the new Preserve Image Dimensions When Relinking option in the File Handling pane of the Preferences dialog box (InDesign➪Preferences➪File Handling [Ô+K]
on the Mac, or Edit➪Preferences➪File Handling [Ctrl+K] in Windows). The Utilities menu option in the flyout menu provides access to several expert features not covered in this book.
You can control what appears in the Links panel using the Panel Options option in the flyout menu. You can specify what information appears with each filename, including whether icons of the file contents display.
Finally, you can see extensive information about the file in the Link Info section of the Links panel, containing all the attributes that are also available in Adobe’s Bridge, such as file dimensions and color profile. To toggle this information off, just click the Show/Hide Item Information iconic button at the bottom left of the Links panel.
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