change arrowhead size?

[LSHess]

Hi everyone! Using InDesign CS4. I need to reduce the size of arrowheads that are applied to a line with a stroke weight of .5 pt. I do not want to change the line weight. (Although as a side note, reducing the line weight down to .1 pt did not get the arrowheads small enough.) Any solutions?

[Peter Spier]

Unfortunately, the only way to accomplish waht you want is to draw the ends a separate objects and group them with the lines.

[naturescape_peopletecture]

You make a good point that there needs to be a more efficient way to produce lines with arrowheads which can be scaled as in Illustrator.  I honestly do not understand why the "standard" weight/stroke of the arrowhead is 5x the weight /stroke of the line...

[Laubender]

I honestly do not understand why the "standard" weight/stroke of the arrowhead is 5x the weight /stroke of the line...

@naturescape – indeed there is no such ratio between the base of an arrow head and the stroke weight of the path.

There are rules of course, but they aren't as "straight forward" as they seem.

Uwe

[corriela]

Or here's an alternative solution using a custom arrow and applying it as text-on-a-path:

http://indesignsecrets.com/making-custom-arrowheads.php

Nice

[mgs70]

Pretty much makes it useless... Way too much trouble to do it custom or create an element in AI then paste it in. Amazing how in Illustrator they give you an area to enter a percentage and SCALE the arrowheads. Imagine that!

Heck I think even Quark X-Press did this! Another example of something that works great in one application that's completely left out in the other. The IND & AI teams need to get their heads together.

[Eugene Tyson]

You can do it - it just needs to make a new stroke. Like a few things, the sample strokes provided need to be tweaked, or create new ones.

Hope this helps

Window>Stroke

Top right of the panel there's a sub menu (fly out menu)

Click on Stoke Styles

Click on New

Choose Stripe

Drag one of the black blocks off the dialog box to remove it

Change the width of the stripe to 10%

Place it at 45% (so it's 5% before 50% and 5% after 50%)

Save it

Make the Stroke Width 10pt

You now have a larger arrow head

Hope that helps

[Peter Spier]

Very interesting, and I'll keep that in mind for those rare occasions when I want the arrowheads larger on a solid stroke.

Got any clever tricks to do what the OP and many of the rest of us would like which is to reduce the size of the arrow? Or to scale the arrow on a dashed or dotted line?

[Eugene Tyson]

I don't think there's anyway to make the arrow head smaller. Except perhaps a large block custom stroke with a smaller point size for the stroke width.

The arrow head size seems to be linked with the point size of the stroke.

I see what you mean by the Dash line - you can't make a custom stroke width for the dash - which is frustrating.

And even basing a new dashed stroke on the custom stroke i created didn't make any difference, in fact they don't seem to act like Master and Child items.

Yet another feature that the Adobe team has failed to expand on in favour of updating/adding other features.

[Laubender]

@Eugene – a good point!

Another way is scaling a path with an arrow head vs. sizing that path.

However, for that you have to change the General Preferences of InDesign:
When Scaling: Adjust Scaling Percentage

Uwe

[goatian]

great tip - been bugging me for ages, that one...

[9999raphael_freeman]

very good, but it doesn't help if you want the arrow head smaller 😞

[Laubender]

@Raphael – how small should your arrow head be?
Give me some values …

I think we can do nearly all proportions.

Uwe

[Laubender]

See here different visible bounds / stroke weight ratios (all values in points):

Uwe

//Edited once.

[fabriced60698984]

Eugene's solution worked for me!!

[victor trujillo]

Thank you! This is huge! Why Adobe hasn't made changing arrow head sizes a thing for InDesign is beyond me, but your technique works great. Thank you so much!

[Steve Werner]

You can post a feature request here. It will make it more likely to happen:

Feature Requests/Bug Reports

[John Mensinger]

fabzanna wrote:

Thank you! This is huge! Why Adobe hasn't made changing arrow head sizes a thing for InDesign is beyond me, but your technique works great. Thank you so much!

The latest release now has arrowhead scaling with an interface like that of Illustrator (although the scaling itself seems to be of limited range, or something, and doesn't quite work in the same way ... er, as well, as Illustrator).

[Laubender]

Right, John!
With Illustrator scaling to 200 % actually means: double the size of the arrow head.

Not so with InDesign:

The scaling is done as if the stroke weight has changed with 100% arrow head scaling fixed.

200 % scaling the arrow head does not mean double the size of the arrow head that is shown with 100 %.

See also my answer 13 .

Regards,
Uwe

[Laubender]

Here some screenshots that are showing the scaling rule with arrow heads:

10 pt stroke weight. 100 % scaling.

20 pt stroke weight, 100 % scaling:

10 pt stroke weight and 200 % scaling:

And that's the same as 20 pt stroke weight and 100 % scaling.

Wheras the size is not doubled!

Regards,
Uwe

[Laubender · Accepted solution]

Still you have to do the following to double the size of your arrow head.

Make sure that in the General Preferences "Adjust Scaling Percentage" is clicked.

1. Scale the graphic line ( or polygon ) to 200 % ( factor f = 2 )

2. Scale the arrow head to 200 % ( factor f = 2 )
3. Halve the stroke weight ( 1 / factor f )

Regards,
Uwe

[creativeadvantech]

This needs to be addressed by Adobe, I appreciated the work around, but why the same feature but different result from InDesign to illustrator?

[coniberep54199097]

Thanks, that's helpful but it doesn't allow you to do dashed lines. Can't do dashed stripes from what I can tell?!

[sitosun]

Amazing ... the first question about this flaw was 2009 ..
Now 2015, Adobe still didn't fix that issue

Workarounds are nice, but totally annoying

Please Adobe .. there are so many things like that ... people are asking for years .. with a good reason

Indesign wants to be a pro app ... and a good designer needs that feature

Why you cannot just fix this?

sorry for the bad mood ..

but on the other hand it's an Adobe forum and such flaws also give me a bad mood

[Eugene Tyson]

This is a user to user forum, hosted by Adobe.

Adobe staff rarely visit here and most likely never read this.

If you want this feature the visit https://www.adobe.com/cfusion/mmform/index.cfm?name=wishform

The more people that request it the more likely it is to be introduced.