From the course: Designing with Grids in InDesign

Using the Gap tool with grids - InDesign Tutorial

From the course: Designing with Grids in InDesign

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Using the Gap tool with grids

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- [Instructor] Continuing with the discussion of grid-related tools in InDesign, here I want to say a few words about the gap tool. The gap tool is perhaps one of the most underused tools on the InDesign tool panel. It's this one right here. You can access it with the single key shortcut, U. It's particularly useful if you're working with a grid-based layout that is primarily images such as we have here. And it just makes it easier to adjust the gaps or gutter spaces between the different images. So I'll choose the gap tool. Let's say that I want to adjust this gap right here. Place my cursor right there. Let's turn on my guides by pressing W so that we can see how the images have been laid out according to the grid. And then I'll just drag that up. And because I have my images set to Auto Fit, something that I discussed in the previous movie about object styles, then they will rescale to fill the frame proportionally at the new frame size. What if, say over here, rather than adjust all of the gaps affecting all of these objects, I just wanted to adjust the space between the two sand dune pictures? Well, in that case, hold down the shift key. So the gap tool working in conjunction with your fill-frame proportionally fitting option set to Auto Fit gives you this kind of flexibility for reconfiguring your layouts. Just a word of, not exactly caution, but just something to watch out for here, you need to make sure that the gap distances, the gutter spaces, are exact. And if I just change this one here, if I select this one, and I make that slightly inaccurate, now when I come and choose my gap tool, you'll see that it's not recognizing the whole of the gap 'cause it varies. So, using our snap-to-guides, just make sure that things are snapping to those exact grid increments.

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