Smart Crop Improvements

Smart Crop is Brand Studio's AI-powered fill mode that automatically zooms and positions an image inside a frame so the most important part stays in view. This release makes the algorithm more predictable: it always fills the frame with no empty edges, always keeps the point of interest inside the frame, and fits as much of the subject area as possible - only cropping in as a last resort.

Image Crop Constraint

Template designers can now control whether end users may crop images within a frame. Disabled by default, this is a per-frame setting. When enabled, users see a crop icon and can drag the image within the frame - the frame's size and position stay fixed.

Behavior varies by crop mode:

• Fit, Fill, or Smart Crop: each image gets its own individual crop.
• Manual Crop: the crop area is shared across all images in the frame.

Font Size Constraint

When text editing constraints are enabled on a text frame, the font size constraint is now on by default. Previously this was off by default, which could produce unexpected results when restricting all other text editing properties.

Adobe InDesign Plugin

The Brand Studio Exporter for Adobe InDesign received two updates this quarter.

Version 1.3.0 (April):

• Text columns - text frames with multiple columns now export with their column structure intact.
• Bullet and numbered lists - list content now exports correctly. Note: indentation may differ slightly and exact numbered markers may not be preserved.
• Nested text frames and frames inside shapes - these are now detected and surfaced in preflight, with the option to convert to PDF or ignore.
• Locked layers - locked layers are now exported as PDF instead of being skipped.

Version 1.4.0 (May):

• Clipping masks - clipping masks set up in InDesign are now preserved on export to Brand Studio.

The latest version of the plugin can be downloaded from our Help Center.