Contact Sheets in InDesign

Forum|Forum|5 years ago
December 11, 2020
4 replies
15004 views

I make contact sheets of photographs regulary. Doing them in Indesign is preferred method as they sometimes get added to other layouts so need to be very editable. The Photoshop output is just kind of a pain since it is one big jpg file.

I discovered the script ImageCatalog in the scripts folder and it does a great job of automating this process including editable file names under the images.

Strangely the images are not in alphabetical order. Any one know why this would be? I dont see anything in the dialouge box. This almost negates the automation as now I have to drag everyting into alpha order. Mulitple page contact sheets become really become a pain.

Maybe there is another way to do automated editable contact sheets?

Scripting

Correct answer rob day

I’ve written a variation on the catalog script, that you are welcome to try—I added a sorting function similar to Brian’s example so the sorting is alphabetical.

This version lets you set a page size and assigns paragraph and object styles to the labels and images, which make it easier to format the catalog after running the script. I only use it in house on OSX, so I’m not sure if you will run into any bugs.

https://shared-assets.adobe.com/link/ade2b284-c8f0-4828-5974-bdce11b7e190

M

Marleen30695761k6zl

Participant

Worked like a charm - thanks for sharing!

rob day

Correct answer

Community Expert

I’ve written a variation on the catalog script, that you are welcome to try—I added a sorting function similar to Brian’s example so the sorting is alphabetical.

This version lets you set a page size and assigns paragraph and object styles to the labels and images, which make it easier to format the catalog after running the script. I only use it in house on OSX, so I’m not sure if you will run into any bugs.

https://shared-assets.adobe.com/link/ade2b284-c8f0-4828-5974-bdce11b7e190

J

JShambhuAuthor

Participant

This is cool and works like a charm. Thanks for sending

E

Eugene Tyson

Community Expert

You could also do a data merge.

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-indesigner-episode-43-video/id96779509?i=1000018682576

There's the image catalog script here - https://creativepro.com/downloads/forcedl/imagesToCSV104.jsx

https://creativepro.com/downloads/forcedl/imagesToCSV104.jsx

J

JShambhuAuthor

Participant

I dont think this works for what I am doing currently but I am bookmarking this video as I could have used it on a more data driven project. So thanks for that!

How do I use the catalog script? Can it be tweaked to put things in alphabetical order?

Thanks in advance

brian_p_dts

Community Expert

I'm not intimately familiar with the catalog script, but I assume there's a getFiles function call for choosing the folder with the images in it? If so, you could sort that array before processing the rest of the script:

var fileArr = chosenFolder.getFiles();
sortNames(fileArr);
//process fileArr

var sortNames = function(arr) {
    arr.sort(function (a, b) {
      return a.name.localeCompare(b.name);
    });
};