Hello all,
I’m fairly comfortable in InDesign (using CS6 currently), and am familiar with the basic purpose of masters, alternate layouts, and the concept of using data merge function with paths to images. I’m not sure what combination of the three I should be using, however, to accomplish what I need.
I am a real estate and architectural photographer, and as part of some of my photo packages, I offer a property brochure that contains a combination of several template layouts (for example, on the back side of the brochure, the client can choose an 8-photo grid, a layout with one “hero” photo and three smaller ones, or other similar variations.
What I’d like to do is automate this process—give the client an order form (paper or JotForm) that they can specify which layout they want for the front and back pages and, optionally, tell me which photos (say 1-8) they want. I would then create a collection in Lightroom and export the images with _1, _2, etc. suffixes and either data merge or manually place the images (probably easier since it’s so few).
Here’s the tricky part. A lot of my clients are hands-on and want to see multiple layout options with the photos plugged in already. What I’d like to do, is have one “scratch” or “resource” page where I place eight photos, the real estate agent’s logo, the headline, ad copy, and other source items onto, and then be able to show the client multiple layout options. This way I can page through multiple options and only have to place the images and other resources once.
It seems like alternate layouts are designed for media of different sizes and not really geared toward this purpose. I tried using one master based on another, but upon overriding the size, the images don’t link from the parent master to the child master. So I’m not sure what the proper tools would be to make this concept as malleable as possible. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!
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