InDesign: rotating layout display vs. upside down text

Hello everyone!

Nice to see such a helpful site and even nicer to see it running in Drupal!

Anyway: I have not been using InDesign very long and I am stuck on the following issue: I am making a print layout for a "digipak" CD case. Effectively, the printed cardboard will be cut out and then folded in half and glued together. In my layout, The inside of the case is oriented one way and the outside the other (180° along the fold). I have finished half of the layout now ... how can I turn the document around so that what I am working on is upright?

I feel stupid asking, but I can't find the equivalent of photoshop's "rotate canvas" command.

Can anyone help me?

Cheers,

- HC

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No problem

Mon, 02/11/2008 - 09:41 — Rick (not verified)

You can't rotate the canvas the way you can in Photoshop. But you can group all the objects and rotate them by clicking the little rotate icon in the control bar across the top of the screen.

I don't know of any way to

Wed, 02/13/2008 - 05:24 — Dan

I don't know of any way to do what you want either, other than what Rick has mentioned.

I had the exact same problem

Thu, 03/06/2008 - 01:20 — Jack (not verified)

I had the exact same problem as HC. Rick's advice worked great. Thanks!

Thanks

Thu, 03/06/2008 - 06:50 — James

Thanks to Rick for sharing a solution!

I think it's a little

Fri, 03/28/2008 - 07:39 — KANO (not verified)

I think it's a little rubbish that such a high end spec program like indesign can't even flip a canvas..!!!

I googled this topic hoping for an answer, now my hopes are shatterd!

yes it is a little

Wed, 04/02/2008 - 19:38 — Dale (not verified)

yes it is a little inconvenient but for the sake of doing the above technique (group and rotate), it's only a little extra work.

No, it's not.

Mon, 04/07/2008 - 10:38 — Alfonso (not verified)

It's isn't "a little extra work" when you use a various layers to organize the elements in your layout. Grouping elements that are found in separate layers result in all the elements being automatically sent to the front-most layer in the group, thus rendering the very idea of multiple layers almost completely useless. And that sucks big time.

I'm a full-time InDesign user. I spend about 80% of my working time on InDesign. I swear by it. But caveats like this one really annoy the hell out of me. For such an advanced piece of software, the fact that I can't move my canvas around (forget 180 degrees, I want to be able to rotate the freaking thing as I do a piece of paper when I'm sketching) is really retarded.

Easy Way

Tue, 04/08/2008 - 06:37 — Ralfy (not verified)

In InD CS3 set up a new document (doc 180°.indd) the size of the 180° rotated artwork. Now in the original doc (doc 0°.indd) draw a frame where that artwork should be, import doc 180°.indd into the frame and rotate the contents 180° around their center. You are now working on 2 docs for the one project, but if you need to update the rotated artwork, just work on doc 180°.indd the right way up and then update the imported file in doc 0°.indd.

...

Fri, 05/02/2008 - 12:45 — Nick (not verified)

Ralfy, you helped me out big time.
Your tip worked out perfectly.

Thanks a lot!

Nick
Vienna/Austria

Great tip Ralfy, would never

Tue, 05/27/2008 - 04:08 — OG (not verified)

Great tip Ralfy, would never have thought of that and it works a treat!!

What about this

Tue, 08/12/2008 - 18:50 — CC Smith (not verified)

I am working on a DL roll around and there is a strip that wraps around the whole brochure. How can I flip this?????

These are all work-arounds/compromises

Sun, 09/07/2008 - 05:29 — Nadja von Massow (not verified)

I totally agree with Alfonso (Mon, 04/07/2008 - 10:38 — "No, it's not.").

You can compromise and make up your own solutions, which are fine with a bit of fiddling. But when it comes to genuinely rotating the canvas, including all guides and positions, sussed out to the last millimetre, InDesign sadly fails.

Being a busy CD (digipak) designer myself, I miss such a feature dreadfully. Yet, I assume Adobe looks at their Creative Suite like a whole of many units that support each other. What one can't do, the other will cover. Completely forgetting though, that certain tasks are vital to any creative process.... such as the ability to --

-- genuinely rotate the work space.

I looked up this issue

Wed, 12/10/2008 - 12:58 — Visitor (not verified)

I looked up this issue myself hense why I'm here and while looking it up a co-worker actually helped me out and gave me a great easy way to rotate. At first I was getting a message saying I would lose elements off of the paste board. All I needed to do was group all the elements, set the axis to the middle then click the rotate button and it worked perfectly.

hope that helps

I mean if it's just text

Wed, 11/18/2009 - 00:22 — ebertoy

I mean if it's just text that you want to make Upside Down you can actually avoid using any graphics program. If you just google upside down text, they're tons of sites that will flip text, and you can just paste this back into InDesign. I'd recommend Flip Text Upside Down but if you don't like that they're tons of other sites that show up on google.