Image and Object Dimensions

1) The object of this tutorial is to familiarize you with a couple of the ways that Design handles resizing and dimensioning your objects and project. To the left is the dialogue window that appears when you open up a new project. For this tutorial we are interested in the drop down window that allows you to choose your measurement system. Since we are working on the web I'm choosing Pixels.

2) When your project opens in Design, it will look something like mine to the right. The thick border in the center is known as the Art Board. This is your project, everything inside the art board will be saved, everything outside will be discarded unless you save the project in Design Format. Below I'll explain a couple features of the project screen.

Arrow # 1. You will notice there is a ruler along the top and to the left of your art board to help you when drawing for both size and positioning.

Arrow #2. If you notice in the center of my art board is my cursor. The long line on the ruler both top and left represent the position of my cursor on the art board.

Arrow #3. You will see my ruler changes from white to gray representing in this instance 370 pixels in width and height.

Arrow #4. Arrow # 4 shows the unit of measurement we are working in.

3) Now it's time to play with an object, go to your Tool Bar and select the Rectangle Tool.

4) Move your cursor around and you will see the lines along the top and left moving, showing you the position of your cursor. Align them to 0,0, hold the Shift Key and and draw a square stopping at 200 x 200.

Hint: Holding the Shift Key will give you a perfect square.

5) Now that we have our square drawn we will fine tune the dimensions of our square to the exact size we want. To do this we will be using a couple features on the Action Bar along the bottom of Design. Make sure your square is selected.

The 1st cursor above is the Transform Option Tool. By clicking on it we can choose Relative Transform which will mean we will be adjusting our object in pixels since that is the unit of measurement we are using. If we had selected inches then we would be adjusting our object in inches. The other option is Scale As Percentage which means we would be adjusting our objects dimensions by a percentage of its actual size. For this exercise we will select Relative Transform.

The 2nd cursor above is the width of our current object. If you look to the right a little further you will also see the height of our object.

The 3rd cursor above, is Unlink Width and Height Sliders. I call it a chain myself. Basically what this does if you click on the chain you will see the link open and close. If the link is closed when you change the width by 10 pixels you will also change the height by 10 pixels. If the link is open then only the attribute you are adjusting will change.

Hint: You will see this chain link on different tools throughout Design. The function is the same.

6) Lets have a little fun. Make sure the chain is closed, click in the width window and type in 150. You should now have a perfect square 150 x 150 pixels.

7) Now try clicking on the chain to open it and change the width to 300. Hopefully you will have a rectangle 150 pixels high x 300 pixels wide like mine to the right.