Master the art of importing and resizing photos in your postcard design project with this insightful guide. The article provides a step-by-step tutorial on how to use various tools to achieve the perfect fit and alignment for your graphics.
Key Insights
- The article details the process of importing photos to a postcard design, starting with resizing the logo to avoid overlaps with the photo below. It explains how to utilize the selection tool on your keyboard, and the importance of holding ctrl shift to resize proportionally.
- It introduces the use of cc libraries for accessing a variety of images for your project. The guide also explains how to select and fit images into predefined frames, and how to use tools like content aware fit and manual resizing to achieve the desired effect.
- The article provides tips on using keyboard shortcuts for various selection and fitting options, as well as the implications of deleting both the image and image frame versus only the image. It emphasizes the importance of saving your work as you go along in the design process.
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In this video, we're going to be importing our photos onto the front of our postcard. Let's first begin by resizing our logo so it's not overlapped by the photo below.
To do this, we'll select our logo using the Selection Tool (V on the keyboard), and then remember to hold CTRL+Shift as we drag upward. We're going to make it a little bit smaller so the images don’t touch. When we release, we'll see it's been resized. Now let's work on adding our images.
To do this, we're going to go to CC Libraries, and from here, we have a whole assortment of different images we can use. Feel free to choose whichever images you feel look best on the postcard, as we'll be utilizing most of these throughout this project and the next. For me, I'm going to use this skyline photo, and I'm simply going to click and select this top frame.
Unfortunately, it hasn't filled the frame proportionally, so we'll right-click, go to Fitting, and select Content-Aware Fit. With Content-Aware Fit, it allows InDesign to determine how the image should best fit. I'm not exactly sure that I agree with how InDesign has done this, so I'm going to resize it manually by holding Shift as I drag the corner of the image. I'd like to see a little more of the image here.
Once I'm happy with the alignment within the image frame, I'll hold Shift so that I only drag up and down. I'll release right about there, and I think that looks good for this first image. Next, for our remaining three images, we can continue resizing each one proportionally, or we can do this ahead of time by selecting all three image frames, holding Shift. With the image frames selected, we'll right-click, go to Fitting, and select Frame Fitting Options.
This way, when the photos are placed into the frames, the fitting method is already determined. For Content Fitting, we'll go with Fit Content Proportionally, and we'll click OK. Next, let's import some images.
In this case, we can try a couple of different images. I'll drag this one in and place it in the first frame, then drag another into the second frame, and we’ll see how they look. As we can see, each image has filled the frame proportionally, and if we want to move them around, we can do so.
In addition, if we’re not quite satisfied with how an image fits—for example, I don’t really like this one—make sure to either press A on the keyboard for the Direct Selection Tool or use the center circle that appears when you have the Selection Tool (V) active. Clicking the center circle allows you to select only the image inside the frame. From here, press the Delete key, and you'll see that the frame remains.
If you use only the Selection Tool (V) and select both the image and the frame, pressing Delete will remove both the image and the image frame.
So let's hit CTRL+Z, and this time, press A on the keyboard, select the image, and press Delete. Next, I'm going to add two new images. I'll come over to the right, drag this one in, click it, and then with the image selected, drag it upward while holding Shift so it moves only vertically. I'll leave it right about there. Finally, for this last image, I'm
Going to select this bottom photo, place it in the remaining frame, and in this case, right-click, go to Fitting, and choose Fill Frame Proportionally.
Move it up a little while holding Shift, and this looks pretty good. If we hit W on the keyboard, we can see what this looks like, and even though the images extend outside the frames, we can see that they're all nicely fit within each of the frames. Let's now hit CTRL+S on our keyboard to save our work. In the next video, we'll begin finishing up the front of our postcard.
See you there!