Hi, I'm Mike Rankin, Editor-in-Chief of InDesignSecrets, and in this video, I'll
show you how to quickly change the shape of an object. This can help you when
you're experimenting with different designs or to fix problems with objects
in your layout. Now here in my file I have a few different shapes. So I have a
square, a circle, a triangle, something that's close to being a
rectangle but not quite, and a big square over here that wishes it was a star. Now
let's say that we wanted to make these three shapes on the left all consistent…
make them all circles so they look like a stoplight. Now to do that, I can select
all three with the Selection tool and go to the Object menu and choose Convert
Shape. And here you can see all the choices you have. So I could make all
these objects into rectangles, rounded rectangles, ellipses, triangles, and so on.
Now I want to make a stop light so I'll choose Ellipse and all three selected
shapes are converted. I could just as easily make them into rectangles,
triangles, and so on. But in this case I want that stoplight look, so I'll go back
to the Object menu, choose Convert Shape, and choose Ellipse again. As I mentioned
at the start, you can also use these commands to fix small problems, like this
blue shape that's not quite a rectangle. One of the corner points here got
accidentally grabbed and dragged down. But we can fix that by selecting the
shape and choosing Object > Convert Shape > Rectangle. And now it's a perfect
rectangle again. It's a little more tricky to fix something like a circle if
it gets messed up. For example, if I take the Direct Selection tool and click and
drag on one of the segments here, I no longer have a
perfect circle. Now you might think you could just select it, go to the Convert
Shape menu and choose Ellipse, but that doesn't work.
InDesign still thinks this is an ellipse because it still has 4 smooth points. But
you can easily fix it by first making it into another shape, like a rectangle, and
then back to an ellipse. So I'll do that. Convert Shape > Rectangle and then choose
Ellipse again. The last thing I want to show you is how to convert shapes into
polygons. And for that you can select an object, like the big text frame here, and
choose Polygon from the Convert Shape menu. And I got a polygon, but what I
really wanted was a star shape. The reason I didn't get one is that the
polygon command remembers the options the last time a polygon was created. And
in this case it was a hexagon that was created. So to fix this, and make it a
star shape, I need to go to the toolbar and make the Polygon tool visible. It's
right here under the Rectangle tool. And then double-click on it to bring up the
polygon settings. And now I can choose some settings that will give me a nice
star…like 5 sides and a 50% star inset. And at any time I can go back and change
the polygon settings again by double-clicking on the tool…and getting a
different effect. For example I'll do 30 sides…and make a starburst. So in this
video we saw how to easily convert shapes in your InDesign layout using
both the Convert Shape command in the Object menu and the Polygon tool settings.
Thanks for watching and if you want lots more tips like this, be sure to
check out InDesignSecrets.com and subscribe to InDesign Magazine.