Hi from Steve Werner, and How to Handle Lots of Graphics
Hi,
I’m the newest member of the InDesign Secrets team. Thanks to David and Anne-Marie for giving me a chance to add my two cents worth here. I co-authored Real World Adobe Creative Suite with Sandee Cohen so I’ll also be writing about ways to work effectively in InDesign, as well as how InDesign fits into the Suite.
Today, I thought I’d begin by describing my favorite way to bring lots of graphics into InDesign—drag-placing graphics from Adobe Bridge. Adobe Bridge was added to Adobe Creative Suite 2, making it the youngest member of the Suite family. When I teach InDesign classes, it’s exciting to show people how well it can serve as a visual hub working with InDesign, Illustrator, Photoshop, and Adobe PDF files. When I’m placing lots of graphics, I’d much rather be able to visually pick them rather than rely on file names. (Note: You get a copy of Bridge if you purchased Adobe Creative Suite 2, or if you purchased an individual copy of one of the Suite components, like InDesign CS2.)
Let’s say I’m putting together a presentation about InDesign features, and I’ve got lots of screen shots to place. Snapz Pro, my favorite Mac screen capture utility dumps them in my Pictures folder, already saved as PSD files. I have Adobe Bridge open, displaying a folder of the screen shots I’m going to use. I can drag the shots directly from the Pictures folder into the Bridge window where I can see previews of each one. Normally, I choose Thumbnail view, but I can change the size of my thumbnails by dragging a slider. I can also view metadata about each file (like file size or modification date) if I like by switching to one of Bridges’s other views. I could rank or label them, but usually I’m just ready to place them so I’ll sort them by creation date so they’re in the order that I made the screen shots.
Now I want to place a group of them for the next section that I’m writing. Bridge makes this really easy because at the upper-right corner of the Bridge window is a button to switch to Compact Mode. In compact mode, the window shrinks (so I can see my InDesign layout). By default, it also always stays in front of my InDesign layout.
Usually I’ll drag the graphics visually, one by one, onto the location in my layout I’m most likely to use them. InDesign makes it easy because it’s been designed from the ground up to drag-and-drop files into the InDesign window. (If you are still using an earlier version of InDesign, you can try this out by dragging files directly from the Finder or Windows Explorer into your layout.) If the Bridge window is still getting in the way, I can click another button to make it into Ultra-Compact mode, to move it out of the way. Or, just minimize it.
There one thing that you can’t do when you drag-place: You can’t set Import Options like when you use the Place command. Graphics come in with the settings which were last used.
Great to have you here, Steve! Thanks for the post. I love Bridge’s Compact Mode because it turns Bridge into an “InDesign palette.” However, until I get a faster machine with more RAM, I still find Bridge 1.0 too cumbersome and slow. I’m hoping that the next version of Bridge (CS3?) will be faster, more sleek… and that I’ll have a MacTel machine by then.
I agree that Bridge should be faster, especially launching. I tend to keep it open in the background. You should be sure you’ve updated to the latest version which is 1.0.4 which is somewhat faster and fixes bugs.
Great tip.
Here’s one that the experts can probably discuss - it’s one of those “challenging” things coming from a different app:
You “place” an image, location of which was a network server. Easy enough, everything’s fine. Log off the network, log back in, and open your document.
Links gone. Shouldn’t be a problem right? It should just be a quick relinking process. But no, if you click the image, it doesn’t have any “Graphics” link (to edit, find in Bridge, etc.). Run Preflight, it’s not even reported as an issue/error.
Image doesn’t appear in links palette - probably why it has no clue of the error when you run Preflight.
So, what’s the best way to avoid this? Better yet, what do you do to fix a document with such? Do you really have to redo the entire process of Placing the image? Some say don’t even think about linking across network files/shares.
Hi Steve
I have atteded Adobe classes by both you and Sandy that were fantastic. It is very nice to see that you are bringing your knowledge to this forum. I work for a large catalog company. I am trying to find a way to extract the filenames of the images I place in my layouts and have indesign insert those filenames ie. sku #’s as keyword metaadata. Idealy those keywords would be removed if the image is removed. This is very crucial since we want to do searches in Bridge and want to use sku #’s to search when searching for products within layouts. Do you know if there is a pluin, script, etc. that can do this automaticly.
Thank You
Shawn
One thing we need to do is to place a whole lot of image files with identical properties — a series of EPS usually — and it is a slow process having to do this one file at a time. Is there any way of automating the process of placing an image file in a pre-prepared frame, one to a page? Thanks for any tips!
Cheers, David
Is there a way to view Metadata for pics without having to go to Bridge? Needed for use in Newspaper production.
You can. Choose Link File Info from the Links palette menu.
I am laying out a wedding proof photobook using In Design. This will include 500 to 1000 images in a simple layout. I want to include the filename of each photo as a caption without having to type each one. Is there a way to automatically get the filename into a caption? Thanks, Bill