Tighten and loosen text

When you tighten or loosen your type with Typefitter, Typefitter adjusts how Adobe InDesign spaces text.

Tighten and loosen text

To tighten text, move the Copyfit slider to the right. To loosen text, move the slider to the left.

You can see the amount of change applied by the slider's position—the further to the right it is, the tighter the text, and the further to the left, the looser the text. To remove your copyfit changes, place the slider back in the middle.

When you tighten or loosen text, Typfitter increases or decreases the step value. The step value is the increment that text is tightened or loosened between a range. The step value is a blended proxy value for word spacing, letter spacing, glyph scaling, and tracking.

The default step value is ±5: coarse enough to see the effect but granular enough to achieve your copyfitting goals. However, you can change the step value and the maximum amount of tightness or looseness that Typefitter applies in the Typefitter's preferences.

Typefitter copyfit adjustments are cumulative. If the selected text has pre-existing local overrides, then those values will be modified by Typefitter up to the limits defined in the Typefitter Preferences.

You can move the Copyfit slider in a variety of ways:

• Use keyboard shortcuts (best for efficiency). To set a custom keyboard shortcut, open InDesign's keyboard shortcut editor (Edit → Keyboard Shortcuts). From the Product area pop-up menu, choose Typefi Systems Pty Ltd. If you use keyboard shortcuts, make sure you click on the step value box first.
• Click anywhere on or near the slider.
• Enter a step value.

See what changed

Typefitter makes it easy to visualise the amount of tightness or looseness applied to the text and which specific attributes contributed to this change.

See the amount of tightness or looseness applied to the text

If text is tightened, you'll see an orange highlight; if text is loosened, you'll see a blue highlight. Typefitter 5 also uses tints to visualise the amount of tightness or looseness applied. The darker the tint, the more the text has been tightened or loosened.

You can change the highlight color via Preferences → Typefitter → Highlight colors.

See which attributes changed

When you move the copyfit slider, Typefitter changes the following attributes: word spacing, letter spacing, glyph scaling, and tracking. To see which specific attributes and values the copyfit slider modified, open the slider disclosure box (click the arrow next to the step value). As you move the slider, the values in the disclosure box update in real-time.

The values in the disclosure box are read-only.

The values shown in the disclosure box match the values shown in InDesign's Justification dialog (Option + Shift + Command + J on macOS and Alt + Shift + Ctrl + J on Windows) and the Tracking attribute (also accessible in both InDesign's Controls and Properties panel).