Here’s something for scripters and automators – if you build automated workflows with InDesign Server, this might be useful to you. It’s a blog post that explains how to achieve better auto-fitting of images onto a layout in an automated or semi-automatic workflow.
It shows a method to capture into numbers the ‘essence’ of how an image is made to fit into a frame – whether it is centered, or more towards the top, or how much is to be cropped… It then allows retaining the ‘essence’ of the fit operation separately from the image and the frame shape and sizes. If the frame or image are later replaced or modified, even if the image or frame change shape drastically, the same fit operation can be re-applied with good results, and it will retain its ‘essence’.
http://rorohiko.blogspot.com/2011/04/fitting-of-images-into-frames-in.html