February, 2008
In this tutorial you will learn how to change the Display Performance of a single image and how to change the default Display Performance setting.
1. First we are going to start by opening a new document: File > New > Document(Ctrl-N; Command-N).
2. We are going to set the new document size to 3 inches by 3 inches.
3. Once the new document is open we will need to place an image into the document. You do this by going to File > Place (Ctrl-D; Command-D).
4. Locate the star.ai file in the sample_files folder from the download.
5. When the star.ai file is placed you will notice it is jagged or bitmapped looking. Most of the time when we are working in a layout program we want the images to be sharp so we know they are in the correct position.
6. To correct the jagged look you will need to change the Display Performance setting. You can do this on the fly for a specific image by clicking on it and then Right-Click(PC) or Ctrl-Click(Mac) to bring up the menu. As you can see the setting defaults to Typical. We want to change this to High Quality Display.
7. Once this change is made you will see the image smooth itself out.
8. There are times that you may not want high quality images to display smooth. An example is if you are working on a large multi page document with a lot of images. If everything is High Quality Display it make slow down your computer and productivity. Once you have an image where you need it you can turn the display to Fast Display which just fills the image box with grey. This indicates that there is an image there but does not bog the computer down with a high resolution display.
9. There are two other menu locations where you can change the Display Performance. The first is found under the Object menu.
10. The second is found under the View menu.
11. So far we have learned how to change the Display Performance on the fly and with two menu options. However, InDesign allows you to change the default setting for the Display Performance with in it's preferences. You can find the preferences under InDesign > Preference > Display Performance(Mac) or Edit > Prefences > Display Performance(PC). Mac location shown. If you want these setting to work with all new documents you will need change these settings without a window opened. This will cause the changes to stick and apply to all new documents or opened documents.
12. When the Display Performance preference opens (if you haven't edited this area before) you will see the default setting is set to Typical. This is what was displayed when we first placed the star.ai image; the jagged image.
13. If you want all your images to be placed as high quality images then you just change the first drop down menu to High Quality.
14. You will also want to change the Adjust View Setting to High Quality. This will ensure that all images placed are done so at High Quality. If you don't want the computer to be bogged down with such high settings you can also adjust the sliders so that they are what works for you.
Now you know a bit about Display Performance settings.
Download the original source files from this tutorial in Zip format Here
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