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• • March 23, 2019 at 12:47 pm #115491
    Ian Jaffray

    Member

    I have a few more books of photographs to do and would like to largely automate the process. Other than master page items referring to chapter titles and page numbers, most of the pages have a single photograph (either landscape or portrait orientation) and a few lines of descriptive text below them. Not too much variation.
    I could add larger text sections at chapter starts later, but I would love to automate the repetitious placing of these pic/text pairs that are on most of the 200 or so pages in each book. I’d like to have a list of pic/text pairs perhaps that a script would work through, generating the pages that way.
    I assume this easy-to-describe project is best handled with scripting, but would any of you greater minds know of an already-existing script repository with this type of function that I could consult, or is there perhaps existing functionality that I’m not familiar with in InDesign or even other software that could be better utilized for this.
    I used to be a whiz in PageMaker, but I’m only so-so in InDesign, although I’m a good programmer, so scripting from scratch would be possible.
    Before I go that route I’m hoping that anyone who already has figured this out could let me know how they would go about doing this.
    Thanks very much.

  • March 24, 2019 at 4:46 pm #115498
    David Blatner

    Keymaster

    If it’s one image and one caption per page, you could automate this in several ways. Check out these articles:
    https://creativepro.com/quickly-place-images-indesign-document.php
    https://creativepro.com/import-folder-full-pictures-page.php
    https://creativepro.com/the-ultimate-contact-sheet.php
    https://creativepro.com/easily-add-captions-to-graphics-frames.php

  • March 24, 2019 at 6:18 pm #115499
    Ian Jaffray

    Member

    Hi David,
    Thanks for the great sources, I’ll give them a look-see. I also wondered if just having a couple of master pages, one for the landscape pics, one for the portrait pics might help. I’ll be better informed after I check out your links.
    Thanks again!

  • March 24, 2019 at 9:13 pm #115500
    David Blatner

    Keymaster

    Ian: Oh, sure! You could definitely make a couple master pages with different layouts. I thought you were trying to automate it (like import all the images at once).

  • March 25, 2019 at 7:40 am #115502
    Ian Jaffray

    Member

    David: Yes, you supposed correctly. Ideally something like autoflowing text, but with a pic/text hybrid functionality.
    I’m in the casting-about stage, gathering possibilities before proceeding. I would like to automate the process as completely as is reasonable, but as you already know, sometimes there is a good-enough solution that can be cobbled together to get the job done without having to design the entire universe. So I was wondering if there might be a hybrid solution involving the automatic selection of a master page based on image size, into which the corresponding image/text pair could be placed, but I don’t know enough about what’s in the InDesign scripting/automating toolbox yet to decide.
    What I want to do didn’t seem that uncommon a task to me, so I thought the first question to ask would be who has already done this. Your links have been a big help getting started, thanks again.

  • March 25, 2019 at 8:50 am #115506
    David Blatner

    Keymaster

    Well, it’s funny that you should bring this up because no, there has surprisingly not been a particularly good solution for laying out photo books like this… but I have been developing one. Unfortunately, I don’t think it will be finished in the next couple of months. However, I have a partly-working solution that you might be able to play with.

    Tell me: What page size are you working with? (The template I’m creating is 12″x12″ at the moment.)

    That said, there are some other tools and scripts out there. I haven’t used these scripts, but they look cool: https://wrwetzel.com/photobooktools/index.html

    If you’re a premium member, check out our InDesign Magazine article by Conrad Chavez: https://creativepro.com/issues/issue-86-photography-and-design

  • March 25, 2019 at 9:17 am #115507
    Ian Jaffray

    Member

    David: You’re a generous guy! I like 12 x 12, it’s a nice size for photobooks and a more supported self-publishing format, I think (Bl–b), but these at least for now are 8.5×11, landscape, which suits a local printer. I don’t doubt an approach could be universalized. For the sake of seeing how it works, I’d be very interested in testing in 12×12. Sounds like something you could charge for, but you don’t seem like a “charge for” type of guy …
    Wooo, more links! Thanks again.
    If you would like to share anything being developed, I’d be happy to try it and hopefully comment usefully. On the other hand, I could try myself for a bit and see where I get to.
    This is a link to a single page from the types of book layout I’ve been doing and would like to do more of, more easily.
    https://1drv.ms/b/s!AlEo8q7HlBjnirIWfE_su4bHvAgqWg
    Pinhole camera photo is copyright Delio Ansovini (DelioTO on Flickr).

  • March 25, 2019 at 11:56 am #115509
    Ian Jaffray

    Member

    David: I’m a bit slow on the uptake … thanks for pointing me to the Premium subscription opportunity:

    Howdy and thank you for becoming a Premium Member of InDesignSecrets Ian!
    We’re so pleased you’re part of our community.

    <|:-)>

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