Discover how to create image frames and import images into these frames using InDesign. This detailed guide walks you through the steps of building image frames, importing images, and adjusting their fit within the frames to ensure optimal display and alignment.
Key Insights
- The process of creating image frames involves selecting the rectangle frame tool and dragging to create the desired frames. Image frames serve as placeholders for the images that would be imported later.
- Images can be imported into the frames in two ways: by going to file place or selecting import file from the properties panel. Adjustments can be made to the image within the frame, including resizing and moving.
- There are various fitting options for adjusting the images within the frames. These include fill frame proportionally, fit content proportionally, and content aware fit. The choice depends on how the image is to be best fitted within the frame.
Note: These materials offer prospective students a preview of how our classes are structured. Students enrolled in this course will receive access to the full set of materials, including video lectures, project-based assignments, and instructor feedback.
In this video we're going to be creating image frames and importing images. So let's start by going to page one within pages.
And from here we're going to be creating image frames. We can do this by going to our toolbar and we'll be selecting our rectangle frame tool. From here we're going to simply drag rectangle frames.
In the case of our front page we'll click and drag from one corner, creating a frame right between our top rectangle and the rectangle below. Here we'll see that we have the frame when we have an x in the middle. This will be a placeholder for the image that we'll be importing in the future.
Next let's add another frame. We'll add this frame right on the bottom to the right of our yellow rectangle. And we have a second frame here.
Let's move on to page two now. For page two we'll be creating a frame right on the top left corner. We'll be creating a second frame so we'll click and drag rectangle, making sure to go all the way to the right hand side of the bleed.
And finally we have our last frame. We'll click and drag on the bottom left hand side. Again if you're not exactly in line with our guides hit v on the keyboard and resize it so it's in line with the guides.
Here we now have three frames on the back and two frames on our front. So let's now import images. The first way that we can import images is by going to file place and within InDesign we use the word place to place images outside of our file.
Within our phase 10 construction brand materials folder for this first image on the top left we're going to be importing the man chop saw jpeg. We'll select it and click open. From here we'll see the image is loaded into our cursor and we can simply click and let's drag it about this size.
As we've already discussed with other logos we have two elements here. First if we click we have our image frame. If we double click our image we have the actual image inside which we can resize and move within our image frame.
Therefore for this image we already do have an image frame. If we'd like to use this with the built-in image frame let's simply click this first image frame and hit the delete key and this might be a way that you utilize an image in its own native image frame. From here we're going to drag the corner by simply clicking it up and we'll drag the image frame so that it meets all of the guides.
Next we'll want to select the center and we'll drag our image in until it's aligned. And here's an example of how we'd use the native image frame when we import an image. On the other hand if we want to use the rectangle frame tool we can utilize this frame we've already built.
To do this we can simply click on the frame and go to our properties panel or we'll select import file from the bottom. Here we can import a file directly into the image frame we've already built. So for this image let's import our writing jpeg and click open.
Now looking at this we can see lots of pixels. This is because the image itself if we click on the hand tool and zoom out using CTRL MINUS (-) is far too big for our image frame. Let's zoom back in.
In order to fix this what we can do is right click and go down to fitting and from here we have a couple different options. If we select fill frame proportionally we'll see that the image fills all of the frame and maxes out our image within the frame. We right click let's go over a couple other options.
The next option that we have is fit content proportionally. If we select this we'll see that we fit the entire image within our image frame. Right clicking again we'll go back to fitting and another option is we have content aware fit.
In this case InDesign is actually looking at the image assessing the image and determining how to best fit it within the image frame. With the image looking like this I want him to actually be writing from the other side. So let's flip this image by right clicking going down to transform and we're going to flip it horizontal.
Here we can now click and drag our image to the left and simply drag it a little bit bigger holding shift to maintain proportions and drag it where you like it within the image frame. Finally if we zoom in a little bit further we can see that our frame isn't quite matched to the guides. So let's simply put it in line with the guides and sometimes they don't always snap exactly where we want them to.
We'll make a couple quick changes to our different features here. This one we'll drag it up a bit so it's in line with the guides. If we zoom out we'll see we actually need to make modifications to this image as well by clicking and dragging it below.
With InDesign making sure that we zoom in and check all of our edges is important as we can leave small white gaps between different images. Next let's go to page 2 and work on the images there. We double click page 2. Let's add our first image within this frame.
We'll go to import file and from here we're going to be importing the file of the cordless drill. We'll click open and let's right click and go to fitting and in this case let's select content aware fit. Here InDesign's done a pretty good job so I'm going to leave it as is.
Next let's go to this next layer. If we select this frame we'll go to import file and for this file we'll be choosing the construction worker on phone. We'll then click open and if we right click and select fitting let's fill the frame proportionally.
From here we'll drag over to the right hand side holding shift and I think this looks pretty good and I understand that we have the logo right behind the image. In the next video we'll be discussing why that is and how to bring it back on top. Finally for our last frame let's import our file and for here we'll be selecting Becky and clicking open and again we'll right click and go to fitting and choose whatever fit you feel is appropriate.
I'll select content aware fit and maybe make a slight change holding shift and dragging to the left. I think she looks good and here as one final change as we can see in this image right here it looks a bit pixelated. This is because InDesign is trying to make it so it quickly can be seen and not use up too much of our computer's memory.
To change it so that we can see high resolution we'll right click and we'll go down to display performance and select high quality display for this image. We can also do this for all of our images by going to view and we'll go down to display performance and high quality display. Let's now save our work hitting CTRL S on the keyboard to save and in the next video we'll be going over layers.
See you there!