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In Indesign it is possible to place a rectangle frame (Rectangle Frame Tool) to fill it at a later time with an image. Does Sketch 3 have a way to place images at later time?

I can't find something like the rectangle frame tool and it seems impossible to easily crop an image.

2 Answers 2

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Sketch is not InDesign

Sketch doesn't have the content box types that InDesign requires, it's just images and masks. Use a rectangle as your placeholder and convert it to a mask once the image is placed.

Step by step

  1. Start with a rectangle
    a beautiful grey rectangle
  2. Add your image
    drop in your image
  3. Select both the image and rectangle and click Mask in the toolbar
    mask objects button
  4. An image in your rectangle — imagine that!
    cropped to perfection

Behind the scenes

The mask button is actually just a shortcut. The actual mask process is to group the objects and select Use as Mask in the layers menu for the mask object. Everything you add to that group will be contained in the mask. Very similar to Illustrator's solution (as of the last time I used Illy, anyway).

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    Thank you! This is what I was looking for. Unfortunately not the same handy way as Indesign but it will work.
    – Ernst P.
    Oct 28, 2015 at 9:22
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    Images are definitely a second class citizen in Sketch. It's all about the UI template; the stuff that fills the template is best done elsewhere and dropped in as an optimized asset. Oct 30, 2015 at 4:43
  • This is a model answer
    – callum
    Jan 21, 2018 at 4:56
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There is a way to do this, although it is not as robust as in inDesign.

Create a rectangle, and when you want to place an image inside of it, under "Fill" on the right side,click on the photos icon, and choose a photo to fill the rectangle.enter image description here

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