Contact Sheet from Images placed in INDD Documents

(Original thread on Adobe Forum)

I am facing a task I’ve faced many times before, but this time on rather a large scale and with very little available time, namely to generate files for a press proof of all the images that will appear in a book, so we can check colour accuracy, etc., before printing.
The book has around 600 images spread out over 18 different InDesign documents gathered in an InDesign book.
The goal is to take all those 600 images, copy them into a separate target document with the dimensions 700 × 1000 mm, and have them placed/distributed in the target document as few pages as possible by reducing white space between the images (but without overlapping or changing their size from the source documents). Ideally each image should have a caption that includes its file name and the page number it appears on in the source document.

Prerequisites:

In order to prepare “destination” document – you need to create a “template” that will be populated with image and description for each link used in the “source” documents:

In this case, it’s a group of two objects – Rectangle (top) for the Linked Object and TextFrame (bottom) for the text description.

You can define and apply ObjectStyle to the Rectangle and Object / ParaStyle to the TextFrame.

Then you need to create a TextFrame that all those groups will be pasted into:

Instead of placing our groups directly on pages – they will be placed as InLine objects – so if you will need to remove some of them, add some headers, insert Page Breaks or whatever – it will always reflow automatically.

And that’s pretty much all that you need to do in terms of preparation of the “destination” document – just create template group and destination story – so it’s kind of a DataMerge – but without the need to create a database because your documents serve as a database.

Main screen after loading Tasks:

To load Tasks you need to click LOAD TASKS and navigate to a folder where Tasks are stored.

By default, IDT will open folder where your INDD file is saved.

1st Task – executed with “play” button :

Before you execute this Task – you need to select in InDesign destination TextFrame – created earlier – so IDT will know where to place our populated groups.

2nd Task – executed with “play” button :

This Task will switch to Documents List and will load INDD files from specified folder(s) – there is only one folder in this Task – but you can add as many as you need.

Then, it marks all documents for processing, clears the Objects List and adds few extra columns that will be later used for extracting information to paste under linked objects – you have access to 800+ Object Properties.

As you can see, there are 3x documents preloaded.

^{Click here if you would like to know more about how 2nd Task works.}

Activate List – activates list so user can see what’s happening

Get list of INDD Documents – loads INDD files from specified location
Mark as Selected/Unselected – in this case we want all visible lines to be selected for further processing

Clear Text List – removes all previously loaded / found texts – if there were any – just in case

Show Extra Columns for Objects – we need to add extra column – with Link’s File Path

Show Extra Columns for Objects – we need to add extra column – with Link’s File Name

Show Extra Columns for Objects – we need to add extra column – page number of the imported PDF

3rd Task – executed in BatchMode – :

This Task will open each document and load its contents – here is the end result after processing three INDD files loaded in the 2nd Task:

4th Task – executed with “play” button :

This Task will switch to Objects List, show only “links” and mark all of them as selected for further processing.

You can of course filter by any property.

You can also sort by any property – or multiple properties – so you have full control over the order of the groups in the “destination” document.

For example, if you prefer to have all links from each document together – you can sort by “INDD Doc” column first, then by holding Ctrl key, click on another column.

If you prefer to have all links grouped by Type – you should click on the header of the column “Type” and then “Item Link – Name” to have them sorted alphabetically as well. Or “Item Link – File Path” if the second key should be location.

5th Task – executed in BatchMode – :

This Task will copy extra information you want – in the order you want – that will be placed under each link:

Of course, this is just an extremely simple example – one paragraph – but you can extract any info out of 800+ Object Properties and then use them any way you want.

^{Click here if you would like to know more about how 5th Task works.}

6x Copy Value to Extra column for Objects – copies value from selected column to specifiied – “Extra 1” column:

– INDD Doc – name of the document with “, ” as suffix,

– Item Link – Name – name of the linked file wth “, ” as suffix,

– PDF Attributes – Page Number – page number of the imported PDF – inside “( )”,

– Page Name – name of the page on which linked objects is placed in the document, with “Page” as prefix and “;” as suffix,

– Width & Height – width and heigh of the linked object – inside “[ ]”, separated by “x”.

6th Task – executed in BatchMode – :

This Task is the one that is doing all the “hard work” – in pretty much exactly the samme way as you would have to do it manually – copy linked object, then finds “template” group, duplicates it, then finds top Rectangle in the group – by label – and execute Paste Into so all the formatting / scale / rotation / etc. is preserved – then finds TextFrame – also by label – and paste our “description” of the linked object, then cuts our freshly populated group and places it at the end of our “destination” Story.

And it does this for each linked object on the list:

^{Click here if you would like to know more about how 6th Task works.}

Modify current selection – in this case we want to select Parent of the Linked Object

Copy Selected Object

Open Document – we need to switch to our destination document

Find Object by Label – we need to find our destination Group / “template” – which is labeled “Group” – and we want to search whole Document

Duplicate Selected Object and move to a Layer – we just want to duplicate – without moving to a Layer – duplicated object will be remembered as “Last Created Object”

Find Object by Label – we need to find top Rectangle – which is labeled “Photo” – in our just duplicated group “Last Created Object”

Paste Into – we are doing Paste Into to preserver scale / rotation / formatting / etc. of the linked object we’ve copied at the beginning of this Task

Fit Object / Frame – extra step to fit object inside the Rectangle – not necessary if Rentangle in the “Group” has Object Style applied with apropriate automatic fitting option set

Copy Value from Extra column to Clipboard – we need to copy value of the “Extra 1” column – that stores info creted in the 5th Task

Modify current selection – we need to select whole contents of the bottom TextFrame – but to be safe, we are selecting Parent Story

Paste Contents of the Clipboard – as per the name – same as Ctrl+V – paste contents of the clipboard – value of the “Extra 1” column

Select Last Created Object – this will select our Group that we’ve created as a duplicate of the “template” – and then populated with linked object and “description”

Cut Selected Object – as per the name

Select Last Saved Object – will select “destination” Story that we’ve remembered in the 1st Task

Modify current selection – we need to get to the Parent Story

Add empty Para at the End of the Story

Add empty Para at the End of the Story – two empty paragraphs

Select Paragraph(s) – in this case we want to select last Paragraph – from “-1” to “-1”

Paste Contents of the Clipboard – will place our cut group

7th Task – executed with “play” button :

As all groups are pasted in a new Paragraphs at the end of the “destination” Story – this Task replaces all “^p” with ” ” (space).

You can of course use a different separator – or none.

ID-Tasker