InDesign – Adding cropmarks to an object. Great for book-making

There are times when you need to add marks to a layout so you can trim the elements, but you don’t want to add them to the entire page.

Here’s a demo that goes through a layout process that includes creating crop marks.
Jump forward to about 2:20 to see how he takes a rectangle and uses it to create crop marks.


Instant Crop and Fold Marks in InDesign.
from Jeff Witchel on Vimeo.

Where are the crop marks?
In order to create crop marks, you need to actually use a script.
So the first thing to do is to figure out where to find that!

  • Go to the Window menu
  • Pull down to Utilities
  • Select Scripts

Screenshot 2014-02-12 12.47.02

In the Scripts Palette (which you can add to your sidebar if you like.
Drag it into your palette arrangement to add it to your collection)

  • Open up the Samples folder
  • open AppleScript
  • Look for CropMarks.applescript

Screenshot 2014-02-12 12.47.30

Now that this is visible, you can:

  • create a new rectangle or select an existing rectangle
  • Double-click the crop marks script
  • Enter some info for how you would like the marks to appear.
    Here are the settings that I recommend.
    They are big enough to be nice and visible, especially if you are using them to back up two separate prints.

Screenshot 2014-02-12 12.56.26

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