* Somebody please describe the difference:

I have struggled a little with this too.. it's all about what you select...

With a grayscale "bitmap" image such as tif or jpeg, ID treats all of those as having transparent whites (so background will show thru), and pixels will "overprint" allowing background color of frame to show thru, lighter or darker depending on how dark the image is... Only pure black will "hide" the background a 50% gray pixel will let 50% of the background who thru.

With a color image or grayscale EPS, the "white" of the photo stays white. (no semi-transparent pixels), no background shows under photo itself.

With grayscale "bitmaps" Basically, if you select a frame background and color it, you will get a "duotone", as the colored background will show thru the transparent background. Like printing black on colored paper.

If you select the image itself and color it (not a background), the "black" pixels will change to the color. Like "printing" with a colored ink.

So you could color the background Blue and the image yellow and get a "negative" effect.

BUT, what are you selecting??

With the black arrow, you are selecting and coloring the background of the frame or group. Let's pretend there are no groups...

With the white arrow,
"1st" state (either double-clicking from black arrow or selecting with black arrow and then switch tools to white arrow),
This selects either the same frame(actually the path) and same background as the black arrow, or -- if the photo was "pasted inside" the frame (as opposed to imported directly) -- you might be selecting the bounding box (old frame) of the photo, if someone pasted a whole frame in there. Pasting inside can make this as confusing as groups do.

"2nd State" (single-click with white arrow) Will select the image itself, Or if the photo does NOT take up the whole frame, depending on where you click you will either select the image (click where the image is), or a frame path/background (if you click in the frame where the image is not). This is why sometimes you might think you are selecting the image, but may be selecting frame if the image doesn't fill the frame.

To test this, you can place/import a grayscale tif in a round "box" and shift it so it doesn't fill the whole circle, then you can see the actual background, the shape of the frame, and the image... color various parts... try it with a Photoshop eps instead of a tiff just for fun.
Also try pasting a whole frame with an image INTO the round frame and see how that changes what gets selected.




-----Original Message-----
From: InDesign Talk [mailto:indesign@lists.lassosoft.com] On Behalf Of Roy McCoy
Sent: Friday, January 15, 2010 8:14 AM
To: InDesign Talk
Subject: Re: resizing photo

Claudia McCue wrote:

> if you want to keep the current frame dimensions, but scale the
> photo within the frame, switch to the white arrow, click inside to
> select the photo itself, then hold down Shift while you drag on the
> corners of the image. Switch back to the black arrow when you're
> done, and click in empty space (good habit to develop).

You would want to do that more often when enlarging than when
reducing, and would often want to drag to adjust the crop, right?
Otherwise I may not be sure of what situations you're referring to.

My discovery on black/white tool switching, again: with the black-
arrow tool selected, double-click on a graphic switches to the white-
arrow tool, single-click changes from there to, uh, "the second white-
arrow state",* double-click changes from there back to black-arrow tool.


Thanks,

Roy

* Somebody please describe the difference between the two. I don't
know whether I keep forgetting that or never understood it to begin
with. What I particularly don't understand now is how when I apply for
example a green background to a photo, either with the black-arrow
tool selected or in the first state with the white-arrow tool, the
photo is still visible (and essentially grayscale, though it's taken
on a greenish tint). If the background is behind the photo, why does
it have a noticeable effect at all? And if it's in front, why don't I
see just a solid green? If I apply green in the second white-arrow
state it's applied to the whole photo, and that's always been what
I've wanted. Now noticing this strange background effect in the other
two states, however, I think maybe I'll sometimes want to put a
lightly tinted background on a grayscale photo rather than completely
color it. Looks like you may be able to get one of those old duotone-
ish effects more easily than you used to be able to.

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