Generally, InDesign is pretty good at scaling things (dunno about really complex Photoshop objects, though).
By the way, which version are we talking about?
A bit of advice, for optimal results:
* first enable High Quality Display
* then select the object inside the frame and scale at will
* last, choose "Fit Frame to Content"

Happy scaling! :-)

I've never had a problem scaling vectors, but scaling rasters is only a temporary solution if you're going to press. When you have your design finished you (or your prepress) is going to have to rescale the psds or whatever and replace them at 100%.

Certainly you can scale any image placed in InDesign, the difference from Quark, which might be causing the confusion, is that you can change the scale of the frame and the scale of the image separately. You can also select and (shift) drag to scale.

I have never encountered a problem with scaled raster or vector files, although I do make sure I do not go below effective ppi of 250 (in the info window) in the case of raster.

Tim

Yes, you can scale anything up and down in InDesign. Other option is go to Ojbect/ Transform to scale % of the size that you want, or scale by x and y.

For Scaling Photoshop file; If you working on couple hundred page documents in InDesign, I would suggest you export that photoshop file as tiff, or jpeg, either 150dpi or 300dpi (depends on what you need), and scale that image in photoshop to the size that you need because it would help your program (InDesign) performance work better, otherwise it would be very slow to take time load a huge photoshop file while you only display it in 1 inch box.

In Photoshop, when you scale down or up by using transform, you losing quality because you squeeze the image smaller or expand it bigger. So, don't do that, go to Image/ Image Size, change the document size or Resolution. It'll help you maintain the original file better. If you worry about the resolution/ quality of the file, save it as .tiff, which is lossless quality file, with jpeg you losing quality every time you save it. You can also find this info on Wikipedia or other sources.

;)

The final step in editing a high quality image in PhotoShop should be Sharpening. And the nature of the beast being just that — a sharpened image will loose its edge if it’s overscaled in a layout program. One should try to stay in the 85—115% range, or redoing the original image is necessary.
(Thank G layeradjustment is here, making this a lot easier in practice).

. . .
Bert Vanderveen BNO