Jun. 5, 2008
Displaying the scaling percentage accurately
Have you noticed that by default when you scale an object up or down in Indesign from either, the control panel or the transform panel its scaling percentage is reset to 100%? This means the objects scaled percentage, let’s say you choose 50%, doesn’t actually reflect 50%, instead it shows as 100% even though the object has been scaled down to 50%.
There’s an easy way to change this behaviour, and it’s one of the first things (among many) that I change when working in Indesign on a foreign computer for the first time. If you go to the Indesign preferences dialogue (MAC: Command+K / PC: Control+K) in the first tab “General” you will see under the “When Scaling” section two options.
1. Apply to content - This is the default setting that causes objects to be displayed at 100% no matter what scaling percentage has been applied to them.
2. Adjust Scaling Percentage - This is the preference that allows the scaling percentage to be represented in accordance with the actual transformation that just took place.
If you want your scaling to be represented accurately, go ahead and choose the second option Adjust Scaling Percentage.
Now all scaling transformations you do will be represented in accordance with the actual transformation that just took place.
Video Instructions (all videos are quicktime movies): 1. Click on the “CLICK HERE TO WATCH TUTORIAL” hyperlink, a new window appears, once the video has downloaded completely (speed varies depending on internet connection) the video will commence. 2. Right click on the “CLICK HERE TO WATCH TUTORIAL” hyperlink and choose “DOWNLOAD LINKED FILE AS” to save the video to your computer. Once downloaded open the .mov file in Quicktime to watch. 3. Subscribe to the creativementor.com.au Podcast through iTunes (not yet available).
4 Responses to “Adjust scaling percentage”
Good point David. We do need to keep this in mind.
By Neil Oliver on Jun 5, 2008
Great info.
By bkili on Mar 3, 2009
Can you have it both ways? Can you ‘normalize’ the font size after scaling so that the parenthetical size goes away? Please advise.
By David Kunkel on Mar 20, 2009
when I set the scaling percentage to 100% the page size is actually only about 75% (when measured on screen with a ruler) so to get my page to view ‘accurately’ at 100% I need to set the percentage view to about 134%. This happens in both CS3 and CS4.
Do you know of a way to get 100% to view accurately? (I use a 24″ iMac screen set to max resolution and colours.
By tony gordon on Aug 18, 2009