Creating an interactive gallery (exportable PDF) in InDesign

[redgarnett]

Hello everyone,

The easiest way to understand what I'm trying to do is to view the attached screenshot, a 2-page spread. On the left are small thumbnail images. The idea is to allow a visitor to mouse-over any image on the left and then see it in larger size on the right (upper-left corner of Page 2). 

Is there any relatively easy way to do this? I am using buttons, placing large versions of each thumbnail into the slot on page 2, selecting / de-selecting the other images, etc., etc.. It is quite labor intensive and it seems the more I add, the more difficult it becomes to preview the finished product.

My idea is hardly revolutionary. Seems pretty low-speed to me. There has to be an easier way to do this. Is there a plug-in or some other "trick" I can use to accomplish this? Thanks in advance for any suggestions. 

Best wishes, Joe

{Renamed by MOD}

[Derek Cross]

InDesign's Publish Online, or the InDesign plug-in in5 (at extra cost) could be used for this - the output though would be HTML5 not PDF. 
https://ajarproductions.com

[Srishti Bali]

Hi Joe,

Thanks for reaching out. It might be possible with Rollover buttons. In addition to the suggestions shared above, you may also take a look at this video tutorial (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EzEVXrGd2WI).

Hope it helps!

Regards,

Srishti

[BobLevine]

And how would that work on a mobile device or tablet?

Answer: it wouldn't!

That out of the way, yeah...it's incredibly labor-intensive and is not likely to work on most PDF readers even on desktops. You need to rethink this entire project. If you give us more info on how this it be distributed, we might be able to give you better guidance.

[redgarnett]

Hi Bob,

Thanks for taking the time to reply. I wasn't aware of some of these limitations. I thought I would try to sell my publication on a site like issuu.com and on my own website - in both cases as a .pdf. On my website I had planned to use a page-flipper app. Someone has been tutoring me on InDesign and for me it's been a very steep learning curve.

I'm told that the ePubs are a whole other world. The document I'm working on now is some 200 pages in length and I can't go back to the drawing board now. Almost all of these 200 pages are static - just text and images, nothing fancy. OK, there are some hyperlinks that would carry you to external pages, but that's as "high-speed" as it gets.

However, for this particular part of the book, I had hoped to find a way to present 40 or 50 images in a more "compressed way", so that it would occupy 3-4 pages at most. The alternative is to simply present larger images, but then this section would occupy 15-16 pages, making the book even longer.

Although buyers would have the option to download and print it, that would be super toner-intensive. it's really meant to be enjoyed on a desktop or tablet.

I'm a one-man-band. I'm never going to have a publishing deal for this to distribute it like a hard-copy magazine, but I am trying to give it the look and feel of a top-quality magazine.

If you've any more thoughts on this, please let me know. Thanks.

Best wishes, Joe

[JonathanArias]

roll over idea is not usefull for mobile devices since people dont' roll over their fingers on mobile to make things happen, they tap. So; it has to be click or tap events.

You need to make buttons, make events to show or hide content. Now. i don't think the events work across pages. so you could not have the buttons on one page, and the images on another. it needs to be on one page. Issue will make your spread single page on mobile anyways, so you want to keep it all on one page.

may i ask why did you decide to go with Issue for your publishing?

[redgarnett]

Hi Jonathan,

Thanks for your message. I've not settled on Issuu. I'd actually like to find a better way as I feel like their "cut" is too high. Thanks for the tip about the buttons not working across pages. That's good to know. I really appreciate your advice. Thanks again.

Best wishes, Joe

[JonathanArias]

because of cost we went with IN5 from Ajar productions. you would need to host files yourself however

[Derek Cross]

Just to expand on Bob’s reply and to explain why I suggested in my earlier post, you use HTML5 rather than PDF for this document.

You can have a word or words or an image (such as a button shape) in an Interactive PDF document as a hyperlink to say another page in or to an external website. But some devices, for example, iPads, don't have rollover capability – only click – so you should avoid multi-action buttons like On Click, On Roll Over, etc and Multi-state object (MSO) don’t work at all in an Interactive PDFs.

[redgarnett]

Dear Derek,

Thank you for all your helpful replies - I've copied them all and am creating a sort of "cheat sheet" for me to refer to so I will have a starting point for learning these things properly. I really appreciate your help.

Best wishes, Joe

[Luke Jennings3 · Accepted solution]

There are a few other options if you decide to go with an interactive PDF for viewing on Acrobat or Reader, although Derek's original suggestion is probably your best option. You can use the buttons to turn layer visibility on or off, using a separate layer for each magnified product view, here is a Dropbox link to a sample PDF, (with the original InDesign file attached to the PDF):

https://www.dropbox.com/s/syf5qw24h38l4g2/Layered%20PDF.pdf?dl=0

You could also use buttons to go to a page view, zooming in on each product to create the views- roll over the product to zoom in, roll off to return to full page view. Lastly, you could attach a separate PDF to your PDF and use the buttons to go to page views on the attached PDF, although some people may be wary of downloading PDFs with attachments.

Here is a link to a related discussion with instructions:

https://community.adobe.com/t5/indesign/interactive-pdf-easter-egg-hunt/m-p/11041718?page=1#M182121

[redgarnett]

Hi Luke,

Thanks very much for your suggestions and for the sample file - it works great. I'm going to explore both options and see which I prefer. This is all really helpful. Thanks again. 

Best wishes, Joe