Bridge to InDesign Contact Sheet Script Now Available for CS4
A while back I wrote about the Bridge output panel which was supposed to make up for the loss of the InDesign contact sheet script in CS4. While it does a good job, it does have it’s limitations. If you’re among those CS4 users who truly miss the InDesign contact sheet script (Are you listening, Claudia?), I have some good news.
Bob Stucky, who wrote the CS2 and CS3 scripts has released a version for CS4. The script uses fully customizable InDesign templates to create the contact sheets. The cost of the script is $25.00 but like all scripts, the amount of time that can be saved by using them is priceless. Details about the script and Bob’s update plans can be found at his CreativeScripting.net blog post announcing the script.
Bob will be working on enhancements to the script which he hopes to have ready by the end of February and will be free to those purchasing this release.
[Update: Here is a generic link to Bob’s scripts, which have been updated to CS6 at the time of this edit.]
Wonderful news! The InDesign contact sheets are much more flexible than the Photoshop approach. It’s worth more than the piddling 25 bucks that Bob is asking; this made my day!
Man, “limitations” is an incredibly charitable description. I just posted a bitter and twisted response on that exact subject, on John Nack’s blog post asking for feature requests/fixes needed in Bridge.
Thanks for the happy news!
I have upgraded to CS5 and very much need the bridge to indesign contact sheets – I need to bring over approx 30 images with their file names but then need to modify the file names which cannot be done before creating the contact sheets to Indesign.(I still retain CS2 because of that capability). Q: will the script written for CS4 work for CS5?
I doubt it, but you might want to look into live captions in CS5. You can use the file place command, select the images and then using the arrow keys create your grid as you drag out the page with the mouse. Right click any image while still selected and choose captions. Set it up to read the file names.
Takes less time to do than it does to write about.
Okay,
Every two weeks I have to review all the art for upcoming titles that the Johns Hopkins University Press produces. I know about contact sheets and how to make them. My sticking point is information. Under every image I need to give the width and height in Picas, I also need the resolution and what type of file it is tiff or eps. I am currently able to use a script called ImageCatalog which is found in the Scripts menu to get resolution and type. I have to manually open every.single.file. to get the pica information, and to make sure the file is usable. For the most part this is okay, but when I have several titles to do with massive amounts of art, I get crunched for time. Any ideas on how to get pica measurement?
Thanks,
Patty, you might look at Rorohiko’s Frame Reporter script
https://www.rorohiko.com/wordpress/indesign-downloads/framereporter/
… but that gives you info on the frame, as far as I know, not on the contents of the frame. Still it’s worth a try.
Also you might want to look at just using Live Captions for alot of this. Here’s a video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8kU51msWNaw
More: If you use Live Captions (or Static Captions for that matter), it can generate a text frame that reports the image size, but it’ll be in points. Since it’s pulling that data from the image’s metadata, I don’t think it can convert to picas on the fly.
BUT you could try this free script that’ll convert the numbers for you:
https://creativepro.com/free-script-to-change-all-numbers-in-a-document-using-math.php
I have been using live and static captions, but it seems to me that there should be a way to include size in inches and picas.