Importing Graphics
In This Chapter
ᮣ Getting graphics ready for InDesign
ᮣ Bringing graphics into your layout
ᮣ Working with layered images
What is a layout without graphics? Boring, that’s what. And that’s why InDesign lets you import a wide variety of graphics types so that you have a lot of choices and flexibility in the images you use.
And through the Mac and Windows Clipboards (copy and paste), you can import file formats — to a limited degree — that aren’t directly supported by InDesign.
The
terms
graphic and picture are interchangeable, referring to any type of graphic — though InDesign consistently uses the word graphic in its user interface and documentation. An image is a bitmapped graphic, such as that produced by an image editor, digital camera, or scanner, while an illustration or drawing is a vector file produced by an illustration program. Preparing Graphics Files
InDesign offers support for many major formats of graphics files. Some formats are more appropriate than others for certain kinds of tasks. The basic rules for creating your graphics files are as follows:
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Save line art (drawings) in a format such as EPS, PDF, Adobe Illustrator, Windows Metafile (WMF), Enhanced Metafile (EMF), or PICT. (These object-oriented formats are called vector formats. Vector files are composed of instructions on how to draw various shapes.) InDesign works best with EPS, PDF, and Illustrator files.
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Save bitmaps (photos and scans) in a format such as TIFF, Adobe Photoshop, PNG, JPEG, PCX, Windows Bitmap (BMP), GIF, Scitex
Continuous Tone (SCT), or PICT. (These pixel-oriented formats are called raster formats. Raster files are composed of a series of dots, or pixels, that make up the image.) InDesign works best with TIFF and Photoshop files.
InDesign can also import InDesign files as if they were graphics — in a multipage document, you choose the page you want to import and which layers you want to display, as you can with PDF files. (Be sure to enable Show Import Options in the Place dialog box to get these controls.) Note that you can’t edit InDesign files imported as graphics in your InDesign layout. (You must update the original file instead.) But you can quickly open the InDesign file for editing by selecting it and then choosing Edit➪Edit Original.
Make EPS and TIFF formats your standards because these formats have become the standard in publishing. If you and your service bureau are working almost exclusively with Adobe software, you can add the PDF, Illustrator, and Photoshop formats to this mix. (The Illustrator and PDF formats are variants of EPS.) If you use transparency in your graphics, it’s best to save them in Photoshop, Illustrator, or PDF formats, because other formats (particularly EPS and TIFF) remove much of the transparency layering data that will help an imagesetter optimally reproduce those transparent files.
The graphics file formats that InDesign imports include (the text in monofont is the filename extension for the format):
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BMP: The native Windows bitmap format (.bmp, .dib).
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EPS: The Encapsulated PostScript file format favored by professional publishers (.eps).
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GIF: The Graphics Interchange Format common in Web documents (.gif).
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JPEG: The Joint Photographers Expert Group compressed bitmap format often used on the Web (.jpg).
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Illustrator: The native format in Adobe Illustrator 5.5 through CS4. This file format is similar to EPS (.ai).
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PCX: The PC Paintbrush format that was very popular in DOS programs and early version of Windows; it’s now been largely supplanted by other formats (.pcx, .rle).
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PDF: The Portable Document Format that is a variant of EPS and is used for Web-, network-, and CD-based documents. InDesign CS4 supports PDF Versions 1.3 through 1.8 (the formats used in Acrobat 4 through 9) (.pdf).
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Photoshop: The native format in Adobe Photoshop 5.0 through CS4
(.psd). (Note that InDesign can’t import the Photoshop Raw format.) ߜ
PICT: Short for Picture, the Mac’s native graphics format until Mac OS X
(it can be bitmap or vector) that is little used in professional documents and has become rare even for inexpensive clip art (.pct).
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PNG: The Portable Network Graphics format introduced more than a decade ago as a more capable alternative to GIF (.png).
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QuickTime movie: For use in interactive documents, InDesign supports this Apple-created, cross-platform format (.mov).
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Scitex CT: The continuous-tone bitmap format used on Scitex prepress systems (.ct).
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TIFF: The Tagged Image File Format that is the bitmap standard for professional image editors and publishers (.tif, .tiff). ߜ
Windows Metafile: The format native to Windows but little used in professional documents. Since Office 2000, Microsoft applications create a new version called Enhanced Metafile, also supported by InDesign (.wmf, .emf).
Spot colors (called spot inks in Photoshop) are imported into InDesign when you place Photoshop, Illustrator, and PDF images into InDesign, as well as for InDesign documents imported as graphics. They appear in the Swatches panel, which is covered in Chapter 6.
Importing and Placing Graphics
When you import a graphic into a document, InDesign establishes a link between the graphics file and the document file and then sends the original graphics file to the printer when the document is output. (For more details on managing linked files, see Chapter 9.)
InDesign links to graphics because a graphics file, particularly a highresolution scanned graphic, can be very large. If the entire graphics file is included in an InDesign document when you import it, InDesign documents would quickly become prohibitively large. Instead, InDesign saves a lowresolution preview of an imported graphics file with the document, and it’s this file that you see displayed on-screen. InDesign remembers the location of the original file and uses this information when printing.
The Place command is the method you typically use to bring graphics into your InDesign layout. Here’s how to use the Place command to import a graphic:
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1.
Choose
File➪Place (Ô+D or Ctrl+D).
If you want to import a graphic into an existing frame, select the target frame using either of the selection tools (either before you choose File➪Place or afterward). If you want InDesign to create a new frame when you import the graphic, make sure that no object is selected when you choose Place. Either way, the Place dialog box appears.
You can import a graphic into any kind of frame or shape (including a curved line created with the Pen tool) except a straight line. Be careful: If the Type tool is selected when you use the Place command to import a graphic into a selected text frame, you’ll create an inline graphic at the text cursor’s location.
2. Use the controls in the Place dialog box to locate and select the graph- ics files you want to import.
You can now select multiple files — graphics and/or text — by Shift+clicking a range or Ô+clicking or Ctrl+clicking multiple files one by one. InDesign lets you place each file in a separate frame. Just click once for each file imported or Shift+Ô+click or Ctrl+Shift+click to have InDesign place all files on the page in separate frames. The loadedgraphic icon shows the number of files to be placed, as well as a minipreview of each file, as Figure 17-1 shows. You can also navigate through these previews using the keyboard’s left and right arrow keys so that you can control more easily which file is placed when.
3. Specify the desired import options, if any are applicable.
If you want to display import options that let you control how the selected graphics file is imported, either enable Show Import Options and then click Open or hold down the Shift key and double-click the filename or Shift+click Open.
If you had selected a frame and want whatever you’ve selected to replace the contents of that frame, enable Replace Selected Items.
4. Click Open, whether or not you selected any import options, to bring the graphics into the layout.
Note that if you choose to Show Import Options, the dialog box that appears — EPS Import Options, Place PDF, Place InDesign Document, or Image Import Options — depends on what kind of graphic you’re importing. If you select multiple graphics, you’ll get the appropriate dialog box for each in turn. (These options are covered in the “Specifying Import Options” section, later in this chapter.) After selecting the desired options, click OK to place the graphic.
5. Based on whether a frame was selected when you initiated the Place command, you may need to tell InDesign where to put the imported graphics:
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• If an empty frame is selected, the graphic is automatically placed in the frame. The upper-left corner of the graphic is placed in the upper-left corner of the frame, and the frame acts as the cropping shape for the graphic.
• If a frame already holding a graphic is selected, InDesign
replaces the existing graphic with the new one if you’ve selected the Replace Selected Item check box in the Place dialog box.
Otherwise, InDesign assumes that you want to put the new graphic in a new frame.
• To place the graphic into a new frame, click the loaded-graphic icon on an empty portion of a page or on the pasteboard. The
point where you click establishes the upper-left corner of the resulting graphics frame, which is the same size as the imported graphic and which acts as the graphic’s cropping shape.
• To place the graphic in an existing, unselected frame, click in the frame with the loaded-graphic icon. The upper-left corner of the graphic is placed in the upper-left corner of the frame, and the frame acts as a cropping shape.
After you place a graphic, it’s displayed in the frame that contains it, and the frame is selected. If the Selection tool is selected, the eight handles of its bounding box are displayed; if the Direct Selection tool is selected, handles appear only in the corners. At this point, you can modify either the frame or the graphic within, or you can move on to another task.
If you select multiple graphics files for placement, you can hold Shift+Ô or Ctrl+Shift when dragging the mouse in your document to place an array of the files, each in its own frame within the area defined when dragging the mouse. This new feature lets you place multiple images in a contact-sheet arrangement. InDesign CS4 creates as many frames as can fit that array, placing a file into each frame. Any files not placed remain in the load-graphics icon for placement elsewhere.
When importing JPEG files, InDesign automatically scales the image to fit in the page. This feature helps deal with digital-camera graphics that tend to be very large in dimension and, when imported, end up taking much more than the width of a page. Although you’ll likely still need to scale the image to fit your layout, you can at least see the whole image before doing so. 25_388488-ch17.indd 285
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Figure 17-1:
At left: The
loadedgraphic icon
displays
a preview
image of the
imported
graphics,
as well as
the number
of graphics
ready to
be placed.
The two
images at
right show
the loadedgraphics
icons for
InDesign
and PDF
files; note
that the
paintbrush
pointer
for the
normal icon
changes for
these two
file formats.
Specifying Import Options
If you’ve ever used a graphics application — for example, an image-editing program like Adobe Photoshop or an illustration program like Adobe Illustrator or CorelDraw — you’re probably aware that when you save a graphics file, you have several options that control such things as file format, image size, color depth, preview quality, and so on. When you save a graphics file, the settings you specify are determined by the way in which the image will be used. For example, you can use Photoshop to save a high-resolution TIFF version of a scanned graphic for use in a slick, four-color annual report or a low-resolution GIF version of the same graphic for use on the company’s Web page. Or you can use Illustrator or CorelDraw to create a corporate logo that you’ll use in various sizes in many of your printed publications. Chapter 17: Importing Graphics
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If you choose to specify custom import settings when you import a graphics file, the choices you make depend on the nature of the publication. For example, if it’s bound for the Web, you don’t need to work with or save graphics using resolutions that exceed a computer monitor’s 72-dpi resolution. Along the same lines, if the publication will be printed, the image import settings you specify for a newspaper that will be printed on newsprint on a SWOP (Specifications for Web Offset Publications) press are different than those you specify for a four-color magazine printed on coated paper using a sheet-fed press. If you select Show Import Options when you place a graphic, the options displayed in the resulting dialog boxes depend on the file format of the selected graphic. When you set options for a particular file, the options you specify remain in effect for that file format until you change them. If you don’t select the Show Import Options check box when you place a graphic, the most recent settings for the file format of the selected graphic are used. Import options for bitmap graphics
InDesign gives you two sets of import options for the following types of bitmap images: TIFF, GIF, JPEG, Scitex CT, BMP, and PCX. You get three options for PNG files, and a different set of three for Photoshop files. No import options are available for PICT or QuickTime movie files. Figure 17-2 shows three of the four possible panes for bitmap images: The Image and Color panes are for most bitmap formats; PNG files have a third pane, PNG Settings, and Photoshop files also have a third pane, Layers, covered later in this chapter.
If you import a Photoshop, TIFF, or EPS file that contains an embedded clipping path, the Image pane lets you apply any embedded clipping path and/or alpha channel to the image in order to mask, or cut out, part of the image. (Otherwise, these options are grayed out.) Check the Apply Photoshop Clipping Path option to import the clipping path along with the image; select an alpha channel from the Alpha Channel pop-up menu to import the alpha channel along with the image. (Chapter 18 covers clipping paths in more detail.)
In the Color pane, you can turn on color management for the image and control how the image is displayed. Check the Enable Color Management option to enable color management. This option is an expert feature, so ask your production manager or service bureau whether you should make any adjustments here.
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Figure 17-2:
From top
to bottom:
the Image,
Color,
and PNG
Settings
panes in
the Image
Import
Options
dialog box.
Use the PNG Settings pane — available only if you place a PNG file — to use the transparency information in a PNG file, assuming that it has a transparent background. You have two choices for controlling transparency handling: White Background and File-Defined Background. The former forces the transparent portion to display as white in InDesign; the latter uses whatever background color is specified in the PNG file itself. This pane also lets you adjust the gamma value during import — an expert color-management feature you should leave alone unless told otherwise by a production manager or service bureau.
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Import options for vector file formats
If you’re importing vector files, enabling the Import Options check box results in one of two dialog boxes appearing, depending on what the vector file type is. If you import older-version Illustrator or EPS files, you get the EPS
Import Options dialog box; if you import PDF and newer-version Illustrator files, you get the Place PDF dialog box, which has two panes. (Both dialog boxes are shown in Figure 17-3.) No import options are available for Windows Metafile or Enhanced Metafile graphics.
Illustrator CS through CS4 use PDF as their native file format, even though the filename extension is .ai. InDesign detects these files as PDF files and provides the PDF options during import. In earlier versions of Illustrator, the native format was actually a variant of EPS.
Figure 17-3:
The EPS
Import
Options
and Place
PDF dialog
boxes.
290 Part V: Graphics Essentials
EPS Import Options dialog box
Use this dialog box to import any clipping paths embedded in images that are in the EPS file. Check the Apply Photoshop Clipping Path option to enable this option.
Also, use this pane to control how the EPS file appears on-screen in InDesign. If you select the Use TIFF or PICT Preview option, InDesign uses the lowresolution proxy image embedded in the EPS file for display on-screen and prints the graphic using the embedded high-resolution PostScript instructions. If you select the Rasterize the PostScript option, InDesign converts the PostScript file into a bitmap image during import. You rarely have a reason to rasterize an imported EPS file — it just takes up some of your valuable time. Place PDF dialog box
When you use the Place command to import a PDF file and you select the Show Import Options check box, the Place PDF file dialog box, shown in Figure 17-3, is displayed. It provides several controls for specifying how the file is imported. The General pane provides the following options: ߜ
In the Pages section, select Previewed Page, All, or Range to determine which page(s) you want to import. You can change the previewed page by using the arrow buttons under the preview image at left or entering a specific page number in the field below the preview image. If you want to import a range, use commas to separate pages and a hyphen to indicate range; for example, 3, 5-9, 13 imports pages 3, 5 through 9, and 13.
When you place the PDF in InDesign, you get a separate loaded-graphic icon for each page. As you place each page, a new loaded-graphic icon appears for the next page, until no more pages are left to place. You can tell you’re placing multiple pages because the loaded-graphics icon has a plus sign in it.
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In the Options section, select one of the cropping options from the Crop To pop-up menu. If you choose Content, the page’s bounding box or a rectangle that encloses all items, including page marks, is used to build the graphics frame. Choosing Art places the area defined by the file’s creator, if any, as placeable artwork. For example, the person who created the file may have designated a particular graphic as placeable artwork. Choosing Crop places the area displayed and printed by Adobe Acrobat. Choosing Trim places the graphic in an area equal to the final, trimmed piece. Choosing Bleed places the page area plus any specified bleed area. Choosing Media places an area defined by the paper size specified for the PDF document, including page marks.
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Also in the Options section, select the Transparent Background check box if you want the white areas of the PDF page to be transparent. Uncheck this option if you want to preserve the page’s opaque white background.
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Import options for placed InDesign files
When you import InDesign files to use as a graphic, you can use exactly the same options as for PDF files. The Place InDesign Document dialog box is identical to the Place PDF dialog box covered in the previous section, except of course, for the dialog box’s name.
Working with Image Layers
InDesign lets you work with individual layers in some imported graphics. What that means is that you have more control over what displays because you can turn on or off individual layers. Of course, to use this capability, the source graphic must be constructed with multiple layers.
You can work with layers while you’re importing graphics, using the Image Import Options dialog box described in the previous section, or after you’ve placed graphics, using the Object Layer Options dialog box covered in the
“working with layers after import” section later in this chapter. Working with layers during import
Use the Layers pane in the Image Import Options dialog box, the Place PDF, or Place InDesign Document dialog box to select which layers you want visible in InDesign. (The Layers pane is available only if you place an Illustrator, PDF, or Photoshop graphic or InDesign file.)
In the Layers pane, you see a list of image layers. Any that have the eye icon will display in InDesign, and you can select or deselect layers by clicking the box to the right of the layer name to make the eye icon appear or disappear. (You can’t change their order — you’d need to go back to Photoshop or Illustrator and change the layer order there.) Figure 17-3 shows the Layers pane for the Place PDF dialog box, but it looks the same in Place InDesign, and Import Options dialog boxes.
Although you can save an image file in the TIFF format and preserve any layers, InDesign doesn’t give you the ability to manage which layers you import from a TIFF file into InDesign.
The When Updating Link pop-up menu also has an option to control how changes to the file are handled in terms of layer management: If you choose Use Photoshop’s Layer Visibility or Use Illustrator’s Layer Visibility, InDesign makes all layers that are visible in Photoshop, InDesign, or Illustrator visible when you update the link to the graphic from InDesign. If you choose Keep 292 Part V: Graphics Essentials
Layer Visibility Overrides in the When Updating Link pop-up menu, InDesign imports only the layers chosen in this dialog box if you later update the graphic in Photoshop, InDesign, or Illustrator.
Working with layers after import
You may not know what layers you want visible when you import a graphic that has several layers. That’s okay. Just select the graphic in your layout and choose Object➪Object Layer Options. The Object Layer Options dialog box appears, with the same options as in the Layers pane described in the previous section. Using the Object Layer Options dialog box, you can also change any layer visibility settings you made during import in the Layers pane of the Image Import Options dialog box.
Using Other Ways to Import Graphics
If you want to specify custom import options for an imported graphics file, you must use the Place command. However, if you don’t need this level of control, InDesign offers three other options for importing graphics: ߜ
You can use your computer’s Copy (File➪Copy [Ô+C or Ctrl+C]) and Paste (File➪Paste [Ô+V or Ctrl+V]) commands to move a graphics file between two InDesign documents or from a document created with another program into an InDesign document. If you copy an object in an InDesign document and then paste it into a different InDesign document, the copy retains all the attributes of the original, as well as the link to the original graphics file. Otherwise, a link between the original graphics file and the InDesign document is not established; the graphic becomes part of the InDesign document, as though you created it using InDesign tools. ߜ
You can drag and drop graphics file icons from your computer’s desktop into InDesign documents. A link between the original graphics file and the document is established, just as it would be if you had used the Place command.
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For Illustrator files, you can drag objects directly from Illustrator into InDesign. Each object becomes a separate, editable InDesign object, as though you had created it in InDesign. (And no links are established to the source file.)
If you use these methods to add a graphic to an InDesign document, some of the attributes of the original graphic may not survive the trip. The operating system, the file format, and the capabilities of the originating application all play roles in determining which attributes are preserved. If you want to be safe, use the Place command.