Moving objects around

We've just been kind of throwing text and graphics onto this page and it is a mess. So let's go ahead and clean it up and head toward a finished product that we can print. The main tool that we're going to use to move objects around our page is the Selection tool, that's the first tool up here in the tool panel; also called the Black Arrow tool. The Selection tool lets me move objects around my page and even resize them and rotate them. Let's see how to do it. I'd like to move this graphic over. So I am going to click on it to select it and now I can drag it around, and you'll notice as I drag it, I see all these green lines flashing on and off.

Those are called Smart Guides and Smart Guides are a great way to make sure that objects are aligned or distributed on your page properly. So I am going to drag this over until I see a green vertical line that shows me that this graphic, this logo is centered with the frame underneath it. When I let go of the cursor, you'll see that it's lined up perfectly. I will do the same thing with this logo down here; drag until I see the green line, and let go. Now I am going to move this image down in the lower-left of this photographer.

If I click in the image out here, around the edge, and drag, you will see that the image actually moves. Now, it's different than if I click on this little icon in the middle, that's called the Content Grabber; the thing that looks like a bagel or a lifesaver. The Content Grabber actually lets me move the picture inside the frame. For example, if I click and drag, you'll see that the image moves but the frame doesn't. That's actually a very important thing for you to understand about InDesign. Images and frames are two separate things.

There is another way to select the image inside the frame, and that is, by double-clicking. Double-click with the Selection tool and you select the image inside the frame. You'll notice that the highlight changed, and also the cursor changed to a hand cursor and that means I'm now moving the image around, not the frame. I will move that down to more or less where I want it, so I can see the picture, and now I will double-click again and the frame is selected; the frame that contains that image. So when I click and drag, I actually move both the frame and the image.

The Selection tool also lets me change the size of frames. For example, I may want to change the size of this text frame. I will move it down a little bit, and then I will drag over the lower-right corner, this corner handle, and as I drag that down, it resizes the frame. Of course, by doing that, some of the text ended up going behind the image. That's not so good. I really wish that the text could see where the edge of the image is, and wrap around it. To do that, I am going to select the graphic, this image that I want the text to flow around and I am going to open the Text Wrap panel.

All the panels live up here in the Window menu, so I will choose Text Wrap from the Window menu, and I am going to choose the third button in the Text Wrap panel. The Text Wrap panel has lots of options that I am going to be covering in a later chapter. But for right now, I will just go through this quickly, just the basics, remember. I am going to select that third one, and then I'm going to come down here to the Contour Options pop-up menu and I'm going to choose Detect Edges. That tells InDesign to draw a line, a text wrap line around the image itself.

It's a little bit too close to the image, so I better increase this amount to let's say 9 points, p9. Now, you will see that blue line that it drew is slightly outside. That line won't print. It's just there to indicate where the text should go. I will select the text frame again and resize this until I can make sure that I see all the text that I want. There you go! Now, there are two other problems that I see on this page. One is that this graphic does not fit inside the frame. I can make it fit by selecting it, going to the Control panel and choosing the second button up here in the Fitting field called Fit content proportionally.

And when I click that, the entire graphic will be resized so that it fits inside the frame. Finally, I see that down here, this photograph is obscuring even more text. In this case, I'm not going to make it wrap, I'm just going to move the stacking order, what's on top of what. I will select this text frame, and then I will Shift+Click on this text frame down here and I want to move them up above the image of the photographer. So I will go to the Object menu, choose Arrange, and then choose Bring to Front.

Bring to Front means stack these frames on top of everything else on the page. Okay, this is finally really coming together, and there is so much more that I will be talking about in later chapters about grouping, and distributing objects, and organizing them onto layers, making starbursts, anchoring them into text. We are going to have great fun. But before we jump into all of that, there are two more things that we need to do to this document; print it and export it as a PDF.