I updated the blog post to reflect these two great tips.

I am currently working on an update for CS3 with a UI which will make it a lot more user friendly with customizable page sizes, layout, labeling, and scaling. One feature that it has at the moment that might be of particular interest is to place a folder of images (including nested folders) at 100% with a routine that “packs” them into the page to maximize the available space. It’s not perfect but it does save a lot of time.

I have not had my hands on CS4 to play around with the new features yet so I’m not sure how to make it better than the included features. I hope to get a copy of it soon to play around with.

Since I lost my job as a book designer I am hoping to polish this up into a full fledged Mac application that I hope to make some money on. If anyone is interested in this or has some feedback on what might make it work better for you please visit my web site and send me comments. If you have ideas for other things that could be automated to save time send me those as well.

Another cool thing is that even when the Gun is loaded, you can save and close your document. When you reopen it, the Gun is still loaded. (Provided you don’t do anything to unload it).

While I’d like to see some sort of Preference or panel control over the dimensions of contact sheet elements, what I’d LOVE to see is the ability to create a default object style for image frames themselves, as we can for text frames and “graphic” frames (content type = Undefined). We still don’t have that, and I can’t figure out why. And it’s especially important to use styles when you’re placing dozens or hundreds of images.

With image frames, you can only apply a style after the fact, after the frame is on the page. This works fine when you’re placing empty image frames on the master page; it’s just one extra step and then all the images on the document pages have that style applied automatically. But for all the other solutions I talked about, the ones where you drag out image frames on the document pages, you have to remember to go back and apply your object style to each image afterwards. Blech.

A saving grace is that even while the Place gun is loaded with images, you can still select items (with the Command/Ctrl key held down temporarily) and choose things from panels and menus. That makes it easier to include an “apply object style” step to images on the page before you go on to the next page to continue placing.

At least with the CS4 Contact Sheet feature, as soon as you drag out a contact sheet, InDesign selects all the frames of the images it just placed. A quick click on an object style name applies it to the selection, and you can go on to the next page.

Nice little function, and it negates the script that I was using (I think it came with cs2 and cs3?)

That is fantastic actually. Really looking forward to getting CS4 when I eventually get my way with the powers that be… nearly there.

But of course, all this can also be accomplished with Data Merge, which gives real power also to things like well-designed caption formatting — although that first requires a database file, so it’s not a quickie method. But if I had a yearbook or a product catalog to do, with hundreds of pics and names and dates, etc., the time spent on the database creation would be worth it.