Master Alignment for InDesign

Getting started

Installing is a double click. The panel then lives in the Plug-Ins menu.

InDesign's Align panel does six things well and stops there. You cannot see what a value will do before you commit to it, nothing stops a distribution from pushing the last object off the page, and laying ten boxes out in a grid is still done by hand. This panel keeps the six things exactly as they were and builds the rest around them.

Installing

Quit InDesign.
Double click the .ccx file. Creative Cloud installs it for you.
Start InDesign.

Where to find the panel

Plug-Ins → Zalesky Workflow → Master Alignment. Every plugin in this line collects under Zalesky Workflow, so if you also have Smart Layers or Open Documents Manager, they sit in the same submenu. The panel docks or floats like any other InDesign panel and InDesign remembers its size and place.

One rule for everything

Whatever the panel does is one step in Undo - Ctrl+Z on Windows, ⌘Z on a Mac. That includes a whole run of Live Preview changes: you can turn a gap from 2 to 30 mm in twenty clicks and take it all back in one.

The example used in this manual

Four objects stand in a row on a page, left to right: A a picture frame holding foto.jpg, 40 × 40 mm · B a text frame that says Lukas, 60 × 20 mm · C a group (a logo), 30 × 30 mm · D a text frame that says Marketa, 50 × 20 mm. All four are selected unless an example says otherwise, and Align To is set to Selection.

The panel

Every tool is one row: its name, then what you set, then what you click.

The whole panel, docked at its mid width: the top bar, Favourites, the three sections, and the status bar at the bottom.

rowOne tool: its name on the left, its settings in the middle, its buttons on the right.
litPoint at a button and the fields it reads turn blue - what belongs to what is never a guess.
greyA button that needs more objects than are selected is dimmed; pointing at it says how many.
foldClick a section header to fold it away. The panel remembers.
keyThe top right says how many objects are selected and whether a key object is set.
widthThe panel reshapes itself: wide, the sections sit side by side; narrower, one under another; docked narrow at the side, names above rows and buttons on their own line.
statusThree lines at the bottom: tips, results, errors, and the gap sizes if you switch them on. The right end always shows the standing state - Align To and Keep in.

Two things to know about measuring

Sizes are measured on the visible edges, stroke included, exactly as InDesign's own panel does.

An object inside a group counts as the whole group, as if you had picked it with the Selection tool. Settings can switch that off.

Live Preview

See it before you commit to it - and still take it back in one step.

Switch LIVE PREVIEW on (it turns green) and two things change. A value you edit moves the selection at once: click a Spacing button once, then turn the mouse wheel over the gap field and watch the gaps grow and shrink. And pointing at any button shows its result; move away and the objects go back, click and they stay.

Live Preview always re-runs the last button you clicked that uses the value you are changing. That is why the first click is needed: it tells the panel which action the value belongs to.

Shift

You do not have to switch it on. Hold Shift and Live Preview is on for as long as you hold it - the button lights up, and goes dark again when you let go. Shift is read from the mouse, so the panel needs no keyboard focus; it works the moment you point at it.

Still one Undo

However many values you try, the history holds one step. Each new value replaces the previous one instead of piling up behind it.

Keep objects in

A fence: Page, Spread, Margins or Bleed. Nothing the panel does may cross it.

Tick Keep objects in and choose an area. From then on an action that would push an object out of that area is refused: nothing moves, the value to blame turns red, and the status bar says by how much it overflows. With Live Preview running, the last value that still fitted stays on the page.

The page is 150 mm wide and A–D add up to 180 mm. Keep in Page, then Stack with a 16 mm gap → refused, the Gap field turns red, the status bar reads Does not fit the page - 34 mm over sideways.

Objects that were already outside the area before the action are left alone - they are not yours to police.
Until the box is ticked, the four choices are greyed out and do nothing.
Bleed needs a bleed. If the document has none, the panel says so.

Align & Distribute

InDesign's own panel, the same six icons each, in the same order.

Row	What it does	Example
Align	Left / horizontal centre / right edges, then top / vertical centre / bottom.	Align top edges: the tops of A–D line up with the highest of them.
Distribute	Even distance between edges or centres. With Distance ticked the distance is exactly the value in the field.	Left edges, Distance 50: A stays, B starts 50 mm after A's left edge, C 100, D 150.
Spacing	Even gaps between the objects, vertically or horizontally. With Gap ticked every gap is exactly the value.	Horizontal, 5: A stays and the others move in - `A \|5\| Lukas \|5\| C \|5\| Marketa`.

Offset

The field at the end of the Align row. Against the Page, Margins, Spread or Bleed the aligned edge lands this far inside the reference edge: Align left to Page with Offset 3 puts the left edges 3 mm from the page edge. Centres, Selection and Key Object ignore it. Live Preview works with it.

Measure

Measure reads the gap between the first two selected objects into the Gap field and says which two objects it measured. Handy when you want, somewhere else, exactly the gap you already have here.

Align To

What Align, Distribute, Spacing and Mirror work against. It sits in the top bar, as icons rather than a menu, and the text beside them says which is on and what it means.

Choice	What happens
Selection	The objects line up with each other. The outermost edge (or the average centre) of the selection stays put.
Key Object	Everything moves to the key object and the key stays. Click one of the selected objects a second time to make it the key - it gets the thick frame. Without one the top right says no key, the buttons dim and the tip says what to do. Align left then puts A, C and D on B's left edge.
Margins	To the margin guides of the page the objects are on. Works with a single object too.
Page	To the edges or centre of the page. Works with a single object.
Spread	To the whole spread, both pages. Mirror flips to the opposite page.
Bleed	To the bleed edge. With no bleed set in the document the panel refuses and says why, rather than quietly using the page edge.

Arrange

The tools the native panel never had.

Grid

Lays the selection out in Columns, with Gap X between the columns and Y between the rows, in reading order - left to right, top to bottom. A column is as wide as its widest object, a row as high as its highest. The top-left corner of the whole stays where it was.

Columns 2, Gap X 5, Y 5: A and Lukas in the first row, C and Marketa under them, 5 mm apart everywhere. Columns 4 puts all four in one row.

Grid presets

The + beside Make Grid saves the current Columns, Gap X and Y under a name of your choice - "Products 3×", "Price tags 4/4". Click a preset to put its values into the fields (with Live Preview the grid follows at once), right-click to remove it. Up to six.

Span

Spread the objects evenly over an exact width or height - the number in Total, measured from the first object's outer edge. The sizes stay, the gaps change, and the status bar says what gap came out. When the objects alone are wider than the total, Span says so and nothing moves. The opposite of Measure: you give the result, the panel finds the gap.

Stack

Lines the other objects up Left, Right, Up or Down from the key object, one after another, Gap apart. With no key object, the one furthest in the opposite direction stays (for Right, the leftmost; for Down, the topmost).

B is the key · Right · Gap 5: Lukas stays; A, C and Marketa line up to its right in their original left-to-right order - Lukas |5| A |5| C |5| Marketa. A, which stood left of B, jumps across.

Same Size

Width, Height or Both, matched to the Largest, the Smallest or the Key object. The top-left corner of each object stays put.

A picture frame changes size. With Fit content on, the picture is scaled with it so all of it stays visible - nothing is cropped. Off, only the frame changes and the picture stays as it was.
A group is scaled as a whole, like dragging a group's handle with the Selection tool. Both can therefore distort a group.
A text frame changes size and the text reflows.

Largest · Width: everything becomes 60 mm wide, like Lukas. Both: everything 60 × 40 mm.

Reorder

The objects swap places - the places stay. In a single row or column the original gaps are kept.

Button	Result on A · Lukas · C · Marketa
Reverse	`Marketa · C · Lukas · A`
Shuffle	A random order. A Live Preview of it is exactly the order the click will use.
By Size	Largest area first: `A (1600) · Lukas (1200) · Marketa (1000) · C (900)`
By Name	A to Z by the name in the Layers panel. An object with no name sorts by its text, then by its picture's file name; an object with none of these goes last. Here: `foto.jpg · Lukas · Marketa · C`. Rename the group to Logo in the Layers panel and it becomes `foto.jpg · Logo · Lukas · Marketa`. Numbers sort as text, so "10" comes before "9".
Swap	Two selected objects exchange places; the outer edges and the gap between them stay. Three or more each move one place on.

Page

Mirror, page columns, other pages, and a safety net.

Mirror

Left ↔ Right or Top ↕ Bottom mirrors the positions around whatever Align To says. The objects themselves are not flipped - text stays readable. With Selection the row turns around its own centre; with Page around the page centre; with Spread everything lands on the mirrored spot of the opposite page - the quick way to build the right-hand page from the left.

Columns

Snap to Columns puts each object into a column of its page. A single row of up to as many objects as there are columns goes one per column; otherwise each object goes to the column nearest its centre. Fit width also makes each object exactly as wide as its column. Facing pages use the correct inside and outside margins.

Pages

Write pages the way the Pages panel names them: 2-5, 8, 10- for 10 to the end, or nothing for all pages.

Duplicate copies the selection to the same place on those pages. With Mirror ticked, facing pages get the mirrored position - what sat at the outer edge stays at the outer edge.
Move Same finds, on those pages, the objects with the same name (Layers panel) as the selected one - or, if it has no name, the same object style - and moves them to the same place. An unnamed object with no style has no twins; the panel says so.

Snapshot

Save remembers where the selected objects are. Restore puts them back, whatever you did in between - one Undo step, same document only. The last five snapshots stay as chips with their time and object count: click one to restore exactly that one, right-click to forget it. Snapshots of another document are shown dimmed.

Favourites

The first section is yours.

Keyboard shortcuts

The plugin registers the commands Favourite 1 to Favourite 8. In Edit → Keyboard Shortcuts, product area Plug-Ins, under Zalesky Workflow, give them keys; each one runs the n-th pinned button, counted from the left. Pin, say, horizontal Spacing first and it is one key away from then on.

Pinning

Right-click any button in the panel and a copy of it is pinned into Favourites; right-click the copy to take it out. A copy is the same button - it reads the same fields, so Make Grid up there uses the Grid row's Columns and gaps down here. The row remembers itself between sessions. Six to eight buttons you use every day, and the rest can stay folded. While empty, Favourites stay folded and take no room.

Values and fields

Document units, a little arithmetic, and arrows that behave like InDesign's.

Everything is in the document's units; nothing is converted. The unit is written after each field.
Type a comma or a point, or a sum: 5+2, 10/3, 2*(3-1). Enter works it out.
The arrows left of a field, the mouse wheel over it and ↑/↓ change the value by the step from Settings. Hold an arrow and it repeats. Alt (Option on a Mac) steps ten times as far.
A cleared field is 0. It counts as 0 straight away, and Tab, Enter or a click elsewhere writes the 0 in. Only something unreadable turns red and goes back to the last value; Esc goes back too.

Settings and menu

The striped button in the panel tab.

Setting	What it does
Panel size	90, 100, 110 or 120 %.
Grey out buttons	Dim the buttons that need more objects than are selected.
Arrow step	0.1 – 10 document units, for the arrows, the wheel and the keys.
Gap sizes	Write the gaps between the objects into the status bar after each action.
Off-page warning	Warn when an object ends up off its page.
Groups	An object inside a group acts as the whole group.

The menu also holds Live Preview on / off, Save / Restore Positions, Manual… (this file), Open log… and About.

When something goes wrong

Most of it is one of these.

What you see	What it is
Nothing happens on any click	A dialog is open somewhere in InDesign - Preferences, Find/Change, an alert behind a window. Close it. The status bar says so.
Live Preview does not move anything	It re-runs the last button you clicked that uses the value you are changing. Click Spacing once, then change the gap.
Objects return to the same place whatever I type	Keep in is on and the new value does not fit - the field is red and the status bar says by how much. Untick Keep in or choose a bigger area.
Align to Bleed does nothing	The document has no bleed (File → Document Setup). The status bar says so.
Something else	Panel menu → Open log…. `log_master-alignment.txt` holds every click, live step, Keep in check and error, with times. Send it with your report.