Creating a catalogue from an image bank and excel data

Tabrez Ahmad

Learn / Forums / InDesign Add-ons (Scripts, Scripting, and Plug-ins) / Creating a catalogue from an image bank and excel data

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    • August 25, 2016 at 3:41 am #87796
      Tabrez Ahmad
      Member

      Hi all,

      At Mondottica, we continuously create ‘Linesheets’ for our customers to showcase the latest eyewear. I’ve attached a to an image to give a brief overview of our current process https://www.dropbox.com/s/kv5cvup04xm558x/Process%20Overview.jpg?dl=0, and a video illustrating a simplified example of the way our final PDF outputs are created

      link here: https://youtu.be/Px1Apqt5sY0

      At any one time, we could be working with more than 100 eyewear frames to be flowed into an InDesign document so something which takes several hours, I know can be reduced to minutes.

      I suspect InCatalog and/or XCatalog could be the answer but before going down a rabbit hole, I would like to hear from others. I know I’m not the first person to come across this problem so I know there’s answer out there.

      Thanks in advance!

    • August 25, 2016 at 6:51 am #87800
      David Blatner
      Keymaster

      There are many options you might consider, including:
      https://creativepro.com/creating-a-contact-sheet-or-yearbook-page-in-indesign.php

      https://creativepro.com/the-ultimate-contact-sheet.php

      But yes, you would get more control from a tool like indata, inCatalog or easycatalog or datalinker, etc.

    • August 25, 2016 at 7:42 am #87804
      Tabrez Ahmad
      Member

      Thanks David,

      They’re really good looking tutorials for what I’m after. Sometimes though, as you’ll see in the video, our sheets are maybe 4-up, or 5-up, and can range from 2-up to 8-up on a page. This depends on grouping certain eyewear frames according to their filenames.

      For example:

      EyeWearImage00001A
      EyeWearImage00002A
      EyeWearImage00003A
      EyeWearImage00004A
      EyeWearImage00005A
      EyeWearImage00001B
      EyeWearImage00002B
      EyeWearImage00003B

      So the above list of images would be 5 to one page, and 3 to another. Do you know what I mean?

      How can I control how many images appear on a page?

      Thanks again!

    • August 25, 2016 at 8:08 am #87805
      David Blatner
      Keymaster

      You would probably need a more powerful commercial plug-in such as the ones I mentioned to do that. I believe InData, for example, can insert rules based on text (such as “page break when the number changes”)

    • August 30, 2016 at 2:04 am #87892
      Tabrez Ahmad
      Member

      Thanks again David!

      I’ll have a look at InData (and possibly InCatalog) and I’ll post my results here for the rest of the community once I’ve explored all options.

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