Lesson D: Shape and Frame Tools

If you need some room on page 3 of your exercise document, you may delete the text and image we have there.

About halfway down the Tools panel, you will see two sets of tools: one with an “X” through it, another without. I say “sets” because if you right-click on one of them, you’ll discover more tools behind the ones you first saw. In each group, there is a rectangle, an ellipse, and a polygon. Any shape you draw with these tools can become either a text frame or an image frame. Or you can apply colors to fill the shapes or to stroke their edges.

So why are there two sets? Shapes drawn with the tools with the “X” in them are born with neither a fill nor a stroke. Those “frame” tools exist to give you a quick way to indicate that you’d like an image, perhaps, to occupy that space at some future time. In other words, they’re placeholders. If you decide to add colors to them instead, that’s fine, too.

• Choose one of the frame tools (with the “X”) and drag diagonally on a page to see the result. Holding shift as you draw will constrain the shape (you’ll get a circle rather than an arbitrary ellipse, for example).

The other set of tools creates shapes that possess whatever default appearance you may have set up when nothing was selected. You choose colors and stroke attributes just as you would with an object selected, as described in “Fills & Strokes” (page 192). But when you make those decisions with nothing selected, those attributes get applied to every object you draw with the shape tools until you again change the default.

• Deselect everything (⌘-shift-A/Ctrl-Shift-A) and choose a fill color, a stroke color, and a stroke weight. Then choose a shape tool (without the “X”) and create an object.

Warning: Be careful what you click on when nothing is selected. You may be creating a bizarre default that will only be revealed the next time you make an object!

Selecting

Another subtle difference between the objects created with these tools is the ease with which they’re selected. Frame tools create empty shapes that are easy to select and move. If you create an object with no fill using a shape tool, it is notoriously difficult to select.

• Select a shape you drew with a shape tool. Set its fill color to [None]. Switch to the Selection tool and see how easy (or difficult) it is to select the various shapes you’ve drawn. You’ll find that you must click on the edge of objects drawn with shape tools.

“Unassigned” Frames

• All those shapes you made can be considered graphics (if they possess color) or, like naked ones, can be thought of as unassigned frames waiting for content. Switch to the Type tool and click in the middle of one of your objects. No matter which tool you used to draw that frame, there is now a text cursor blinking in it. Right-click and select Fill with Placeholder Text.
• Select a different object (with the Selection tool!). Go to File > Place… and choose an image in the “Links” folder, from which we chose an image in the previous lesson. You may have to use those fitting options in the Properties panel, but the image is now in the frame that was selected.

So when you are working out design ideas, you will draw placeholder frames where you desire text and/or images to be later. When you’ve chosen images and have copy to use, you can then use the Place… command to insert them into those awaiting frames.

Applying Fills and Strokes

When choosing a fill or stroke color, you are usually choosing from a list of swatches. Shortly, you’ll create your own, but let’s try something else first.

• Select (or draw) an empty frame. Hold the shift key as you go to choose a fill color. Instead of a list of swatches, you’ll see the Color panel, from which you can choose any color (note the rainbow along its bottom edge). Also note the small menu in the upper-right corner. This panel has a panel menu just like all others. When you click on that menu, you can choose which color model to use to choose color (Lab, CMYK, or RGB).

• You will need to use the panel menu if you previously applied a swatch. Try that. Apply a fill color without holding down shift; that is, apply a color swatch. Then, holding the shift key, click the fill color menu again and notice that the Color panel is showing only Tints of the previously chosen swatch. But if you change the color model to RGB, for instance, you’ll have the whole rainbow from which to choose again.

Stacking Order

• Using the Selection tool, drag an object so that it overlaps with another object. It is very likely that the more recently created object is above the older one.

If you have used other Adobe programs, you may be familiar with Layers. InDesign has that feature, too, and we will discuss it in depth later. All of the objects you have been manipulating in this document currently occupy the same layer, yet they still exhibit a stacking order. In other words, objects can be in front of or behind others even if they are not on layers above or below.

• Move an object behind the others on the same layer. To do so, select it. Then, right-click and choose Arrange > Send to Back. You may notice Send Backward, but it’s difficult to know how many times you’d need to choose that command to arrange a specific object.

Align and Distribute

• Go to View > Grids & Guides and ensure that Smart Guides is checked.

As you slowly move an object around on a spread, try to notice thin green lines that appear when the object you’re dragging is aligned in some way to another object. If the top edge of the object you’re dragging aligns briefly with the bottom of another, you’ll see a green line connecting the top of the object moved with the bottom of the other. If you move an object so that it is the same distance from another object as that other object is from a third, you’ll see Smart Guides for that, too.

• Draw a few shapes (rectangles and ellipses) and alter their colors. Also, randomize their sizes a bit and arrange them into a very rough row. Maybe a bit like this:

• Now select all of them: with the Selection tool, click one, then hold down the shift key and click each of the others. Although a dozen alignment options appear in the Control panel when multiple objects are selected, you can see all the options if you choose Window > Object & Layout > Align. Since these objects are horizontally arranged, focus on the seven buttons on the right (yes, including the bottom row of buttons). Try clicking a button, then undo the action so you can try another. Since these objects vary so much in size and shape, it’s likely we’ll want to have equal space between them to give a sense of order. That’s what the bottom right button ( called Distribute Horizontal Space) will do.

  You can go deeper by reading “Alignment & Distribution” (page 216). Or read that later and continue with the course for now.

Gridify

Although it’s easy to get order from one-dimensional chaos, it’s harder to use the Align panel to get a grid of objects. But if you know that’s what you want at the outset, it’s easy to draw a grid of shapes.

• Go to the empty page 5 of the 2 Frames & Shapes document and choose the Ellipse tool. With the cursor near the upper-left corner of the page, start to drag as if you were creating a very large ellipse. But as you drag (with the mouse button held down), tap the up arrow or right arrow key. With each tap of ↑, you’ll get a new row of ellipses. Each tap of → makes a column. Down removes rows and left removes columns.

When you finally release the mouse button, you will have as many shapes as you desired, all of them selected. While all are selected, you can use the handles of the bounding box that surrounds them to resize the lot. If deselected, you’ll find each is independent of the others.

It can be easy to select many objects at once as long as there aren’t undesired objects mixed in with the ones you want selected. Using the Selection tool, drag a box that encounters the objects you want selected. Start dragging in an empty area beyond the edge of any object. There’s no need to completely encompass the objects; the box, called a “marquee,” will select any object it touches.

Groups

We often need objects to work together. A classic example is an image and its caption: if you relocate one, you’d certainly want the other to come along for the ride. To be sure that happens, we group them together. To get a sense of how groups work, we’ll make a couple of groups, then group them together. We’ll examine how to edit the parts without ungrouping.

• Select about half the objects you created using the gridify technique. To group them, you can right-click and choose Group, or you can use the shortcut ⌘-G/Ctrl-G. Now select the rest of those objects and group them. Check out how easy it is to select a group: a click with the Selection tool on any object in the group selects the whole group. A marquee selection needs to touch only one object in each group to select both entire groups. Do so! Select both groups and group them together.
• Let’s edit something within the group. Use the Selection tool and double-click on an element in a group. Double-clicking selects that element. In our current case, we have a group whose elements are groups, one of which is now selected. Double-click on one of its ellipses to select that ellipse. Each tap of the esc key goes out one layer of that onion: the first tap selects the group the ellipse is part of, a second tap selects the group of groups. So the rule we encountered with both image and text frames—double-clicking to get in, esc to get out—works with groups, too.

Gridify Images

• Delete that group of ellipses. In its place, we’re going to make a grid of six images.
• We’ll start by using the Place command, just as we would with a single image (File > Place…). This time, navigate to your “2 Frames & Shapes” folder, then to its “Links” folder, and then to “a folder of pix.” We need to highlight all the images in that folder (click on the first one, then shift-click on the last) and then click Open. The cursor will then be loaded with all six images. In fact, you should see a number “6” in the cursor. Tapping the left or right arrow keys will change which image is displayed in the cursor.

You can place those six images one at a time by dragging out boxes in whatever size you choose. After each image is placed, the number of images in the cursor will drop by one. Try that a couple of times, but then use undo to “reload” the cursor with all six images again.

• With the cursor fully loaded, starting in the page’s upper-left margin, start dragging down and to the right. As you drag (keep that mouse button held down!), tap the up arrow key once and the right arrow key twice. With the tap of ↑, you made a second row. Each tap of → made a column. That should give you six areas, one for each image. Keeping the mouse button depressed, you can move your mouse hand to control how big an area those images will fit. Keep holding! By using ⌘-↑/Ctrl-↑ or ⌘-↓/Ctrl-↓ you change the space between the rows, and ⌘-→/Ctrl-→ or ⌘-←/Ctrl-← changes the space between columns. Is your mouse hand tired yet?

When you finally release the mouse (yay!), you have six frames of equal size and shape with images made to fit within them.

• With all six selected, right-click on any one of them and choose a Fitting option, either Fill Frame Proportionately or Fit Frame to Content. In this case, the latter is likely best.

Gridify Text Frames

• Delete those images and choose the Type tool. Start dragging as you would to create a single text frame, but tap the up or right arrow keys before releasing the mouse. You have created multiple text frames, each linked to the next. If you paste text into the first frame, it will flow into the subsequent ones. Most of us use this feature (using only the right arrow key) to create a few text frames to serve as columns.

Object Styles Introduction

• Either find two unassigned frames (neither a text nor image frame) or draw two new ones with the shape tools. Select one of them, then use either the Properties panel or the Control panel to change the Appearance attributes. In the following figure, I’m using the Properties panel. Click on the Fill and Stroke color boxes to change them. I wanted arbitrary colors, so I chose the color panel icon (a painter’s palette), used its panel menu to choose RGB, and then I chose a color from the rainbow spectrum.

Change the stroke weight and type, too, if you wish. I chose a 4 pt dotted stroke. Keep that object selected for the next part.

• Locate the Object Styles panel. If it’s not on-screen, get it by choosing Window > Styles > Object Styles. Open its panel menu (in its upper-right corner) and choose New Object Style…. This will yield an intimidatingly large dialog box.

You have just recorded every attribute of that shape in a way that can be applied to other objects with a single click! If you were to apply the style to dozens of objects, it’s easy to change them all very quickly by redefining the style. To be certain that the original shape is also governed by the style, be sure to check the checkbox at the bottom: Apply Style to Selection. Once checked, it will be checked by default when you create new styles. The same is true of the Preview checkbox.

The list of Basic Attributes on the left is so long you need to scroll to see them all. For now, just look at two: Fill and Stroke. Click the words “Fill” or “Stroke” to see the settings. Clicking the checkbox next to one may cause the object style to ignore that attribute!

• Finish by giving the style a name (at top). Clicking OK or pressing the Enter key accepts your changes and closes the dialog box.

Note: If you need to edit that style, do so safely by right-clicking the name of the style, and choosing Edit. Do not left click it, especially if something is selected that shouldn’t have the style applied to it.

• Select the other shape you drew or found, then click just once on the name of the style you just made. Consider this: an object style can record any attribute of any kind of object!

  The Compendium section of this book has a lot to say about “Object Styles” (page 267) and the many attributes they control.