Two frames with the same imported image - update both with just placing in one image....

[Danny Schlitz]

OK, this is hard for more to frame and I am not sure if I have am using the correct search terms. 

I have two frames and I need to place an object into one frame. Trying to figure out how to get the second frame to update with the same imported image. I am working on a document that many designers will use. One image needs to show up on a few pages. I want them to be able to place in one image into a frame on page 1 - then have it populate to the other frames on other pages in the same document. I don't want a designer to have to place this image in multiple times.

Hopefully this makes sense.

Cheers

[Migintosh · Accepted solution]

I'm not sure if this is what you're after, but suppose you had an image called abc.psd and you placed it on several pages. Now if you want a different image in all of those image frames, you can name the new image abc.psd, place it in the folder where the old image was, and InDesign will show the links as modified. Just update the links in one go, and all of the old images will be the new ones. If they have a different size or shape, they may fit differently into the frames, but I don't think there's a way for InDesign to know how you want them to fit without you telling it.

Hope that helps.

[Danny Schlitz]

This totaly makes sense. I was hoping that there was a way to create multiple frames without images. But give them all some sort of unique name or link the frames so dropping in one image would populate them all. It seems that this is a feature not in Indesign - but an idea that could be cool. Thanks for the reply!

[Laubender]

Hi Danny,

technically this is possible using contents of a table cell that is part of a header or a footer row. In the very moment you do an update of the header or the footer all headers and footers that are showing in the document will be updated instantly.

But I do not think it is reasonable to do this. Why? For every instance of the placed graphic you need at least one threaded text frame that will hold the header table row plus at least one body row.

All in all a very complex set-up that can break anytime a user decides to change the height of a text frame the table is running through. So I'd say, stay with the suggestion by Migintosh.

Regards,
Uwe Laubender

( ACP )

[Danny Schlitz]

Great ideas. This seems to be a bit tough to execute and risky. But yeah, thanks for thinking it through! Cheers.

[Laubender]

Hi Danny,

if you think of placeholders you could also place InDesign pages.

One placed page could hold an image frame.

If you want to update the placed pages simply open the InDesign document with that page and change its contents. Do not rename that document. Updating the placed page is not an automatic process if the change happens when a document is open while the placed page has changed. One has to update the placed and linked InDesign page in the open document in the Links panel.

Note: You can set your InDesign preferences so that all links of a document that is about to open will update automatically.

Just to give you some ideas…

FWIW: All scenarios depend on the way how you distribute data or if your designers are working from a mutual server.

Regards,
Uwe Laubender

( ACP )

[Luke_Jennings]

You can use the Content Collector tool to collect and place an object, by choosing to place the object as a link, anything you do to the original object will be repeated on the collected and placed object, including text, vector and images. (upon updating the links).

So if you place an image, collect the contents, place and link the contents on a different page, then delete the original image, you can place a new image in the empty frame and the new image will appear on both pages. If you copy the placed and linked frame and paste it into many pages, the image placed into the first empty frame will appear on all pages. It works sort of like a master page. You can make additional edits to placed and linked objects (unlike master pages) however, any additional edits to the original object will cause the changes to the placed object to revert to the original (with a warning message).