Placed Image Scale Percentage
We desperately need a way to tell the percentage scale of a placed image — or more specifcally, a set of placed images — in Illustrator. A perfect example of this is when you have a set of icons that are all designed at the same size relative to each other, with the same stroke widths. If you place 20 of them on the artboard, it's easy to accidentally have some slightly larger than others, and trying to normalize the scale is darned near impossible because there is ABSOLUTELY NO INDICATION ANYWHERE as to the scale that they're placed at.
Kris Hunt
shared this idea
-
Kris, were you able to find and test the scripts I listed? With anyone it becomes much easier and almost no math is required to shepherd the scales.
I don’t offer these as final solutions, but sure they just work and will save you a t on of time — now, already. -
Kris Hunt
commented
🤦🏻♂️ I actually didn't realize you could twirl down the Links panel to reveal scale information. That helps a lot, but we still a way to change the scale to an exact amount instead of having to do a bunch of math to normalize the scale of multiple things on the page.
-
I see, totally agree.
Links panel offers the information about scaling linked assets have, but no way to control it.
Rasterino handles only raster images :/But there are several free scripts that allow to control the scaling and the rotation for placed art:
1. WR-descaleimages by Wolfgang Reszel (just resets to 100%, and flips if you have Y-axis flipped)
2. ReTransN 4 by PICTRIX — can now hard to obtain, since the site is down
3. UnScale 5 by same PICTRIX
Once these are resized, one can use Transform each to choose a new scaling factor. -
Kris Hunt
commented
Yes, it’s especially a problem when placing vectors. Right now I’m working on some wall graphics at 100% scale (now that Illustrator can finally work with artboards larger than 227 inches, or whatever the previous limit was). I have a set of hundreds of line icons I’ve designed, and I might use 20 of them in this one mural. Even though the icons are vector art, I prefer to place them on the page as linked images rather than paste them because I don’t want to accidentally alter them in any way. In particular, I definitely want to avoid scaling them without having the “Scale Strokes & Effects” checkbox checked, since they are line icons with live strokes. When I place them in the page, they are tiny since I’m working on a massive artboard. The only way to be sure every placed icon is at the same scale would be to place them all at once and scale them up to size together, but that’s not a realistic workflow, since I’m designing the wall one section at a time, and I may change my mind about the size of the icons later.
-
So you mean placing non-raster links then?
How would you make them placed at different scales then?
Do you refer to linked or embedded art?
I have two direction in mind when this can go, so I’d appreciate if you help me to understand it further. -
Kris Hunt
commented
I almost mentioned using Rasterino as a workaround, but even it doesn’t help with non-raster images.
-
Kris, totally agree. AI offers no native support for managing resolution of placed and embedded images.
I solved this problem for myself with Rasterino plugin from Astute Graphics — among other things, it allows to set a resolution for a selection of images, altering their scale on canvas form a chosen reference point. I ahve no idea how would I manage the problem without it. I also remember having a script, but can’t find it.
