Some images are greyed out and I am not able to place them into my document

Forum|Forum|5 years ago
September 20, 2020
5 replies
3827 views

I am creating a document with a tight deadline.

I have recently taken some new images for the document with my iphone 11 pro and when I try to place some of them into my document, after going to File - Place - and select the Photos folder, some of the images in the folder are greyed out and I am not able to select. It seems really random as out of similar photos taken within a short period of time of the same subject some of them are ok to select and others are not. Tipically the ones I want to use are greyed out.

I tried placing these photos in a Word document and they worked fine which makes me think the issue is not with the image but for some reason InDesign is not allowing them to be placed.

I have attached a screenshot.

Any ideas? I have never come across this before.

This topic has been closed for replies.

Correct answer rob day

Brilliant, thank you Rob. I have checked and my Camera Raw preferences are correct.

I have another question, my images are in RGB mode, is it best to convert them into CMYK mode before placing them in my InDesign document? The document is going to be printed. If I am editing the image first in photoshop, what is the best procedure to convert to CMYK? Before editing or after?

Thanks so much for your help.

The conversion to CMYK can happen in Photoshop, on Export to PDF from InDesign, or at print output in the RIP. You should never need to edit in CMYK mode, and if you do make a conversion either in Photoshop or on a PDF export you should know the correct press output CMYK profile, which should also be set as your InDesign pagelayout’s assigned CMYK profile.

It is much easier and more efficient to convert the entire document at export or print. If you are placing RGB make sure you turn on Overprint Preview so you are not mislead by out-of-gamut RGB colors that can’t be printed—Overprint Preview displays a CMYK print preview of RGB color.

rob day

Community Expert

You can also bypass Photos and use Bridge via OSX’s Image Capture—lets you drag and drop from a connected iphone to any folder:

rob day

Community Expert

There are also some iPhone apps that let you shoot in a RAW format, Camera+ seems to be the best.

https://iphonephotographyschool.com/camera-plus/

For Adobe workflows, Bridge or Lightroom are much better content managers. Camera+ lets you sync to a folder and from there you could use Bridge or Lightroom to manage.

Barb Binder

Community Expert

Hi Claudia:

FWIW, I can see the same thing in my Photos folder. On closer examination, the images that were taken in portrait mode on my iPhone are available to Place. Most (but not all) of the Live Photos are unavailable as are all of my Panoramas. iPhones can also use Burst mode—I didn't confirm this but I'll bet they won't come in directly.

My workflow involves creating a project folder for each new project. I have a links folder within the project folder and I drag all images out of the Photos apps to that folder. When you drag an image of out of the Photos app, it is automatically converted to a jpeg. If the images don't need editing, you could skip Photoshop.

~Barb

~Barb at Rocky Mountain Training

R

Randy Hagan

Community Expert

You're likely shooting/saving photos on your iPhone in a format that InDesign doesn't recognize.

Rob's steering you right: save the phone shots to your computer, open them in Photoshop and save them in a format that InDesign will accept, like JPEGs. The Adobe developers who slave over Photoshop will probably get annoyed by my saying this, but Photoshop is a great file translation tool for opening most any pixel-based image and saving in many different useful formats. It'll get you where you want to be in this situation.

Randy

rob day

Community Expert

The forum attachments don’t seem to be working—use the photo icon in the text formatting menu to post a screen capture.

I assume you iPhone photos are JPEGs? Try opening the problem JPEGs in Photoshop and resaving them as Photoshop Format (PSDs).

C

Claudia5FB2Author

Known Participant

Thank you Rob Randy,

The photos are actually in HEIC format. However about two thirds of them are happily ready to be placed in my InDesign document and only about a third are greyed out. So if the format was the issue, wouldn't they all be greyed out? I have inserted a screenshot again.

So your suggested plan of action is to open them in Photoshop and save them as a JPEG or TIFF?