Find/Change Linked Images (All Documents)

[aDavid]

Hi there,

I'm part of a project where we have to take one design and build out about 60 versions in different sizes.  Oh yeah, and that one design, there's about 200 of them.  And of course, everything needs to be done as soon as we possibly can.  The one thing that might help a little is at least a few designs are similar except for a slight change in copy, which we can deal with using Find/Change across all open documents, and a few image swaps.  Is there a way to use that Find/Change for linked images?  

[Steve Werner]

Find/Change can't help you with that but you should explore using the Content Collector tools which are designed for your kind of workflow:

https://helpx.adobe.com/indesign/using/linked-content.html

Here's a tutorial video to help you out:

10:20Content collector tools in InDesign CS6 | lynda.com

[aDavid]

That's definitely helpful for building initial pieces, but it doesn't really help with the problem I'm hoping to solve.  The problem is that when all is said and done, I'm going to have about 60 individual documents, all laid out perfectly, but with an image that needs to be replaced with a different one across those 60 documents.  

Either way, they'll have to be looked at to make sure the placement of the image is all right, but it would be helpful to find a way to quickly have that image placed automatically, just to save the hasstle of placing the image over and over again.  

It's one of those things that isn't that difficult or time consuming to do, but when it has to be done 60ish times multiplied by five or six different layouts, working with links that have to live on a remote server, the time adds up.

[Steve Werner]

You're asking two questions:

(1) How do you place an image automatically on each document? But if there are 60 different versions each with different dimensions, how can you automate that? Using the Content Placer seems to make it about as automated as you can do it, it seems to me.

(2) How do you replace that common linked image on each document? If the replacement image is the same size, then you just update the image with another of the same name, and do a quick update on each document. If the replacement image is a different size, that's a different question. The Content Aware Fit command would probably help with that.

[aDavid]

Nope.  Not asking question 1 at all.  Not worried about that part.  Only asking that second one, how to replace a common linked image on each document at once.  

But this isn't the kind of situation where Twitter updated their bird logo and i need to just update to the newest one.  I can't rename the images.  

Essentially the layout will remain the same, but one set of pieces will be about dining, so there's a dining image.  The second set will be about entertainment, so there will be an entertainment image.  Replacing the text content across all documents is easy with a find/change across all documents.  I'm trying to find a similar solution to find/change images, or even use the image's file path.  

[Steve Werner]

"it would be helpful to find a way to quickly have that image placed automatically, just to save the hasstle of placing the image over and over again.  " I read that as question 1.

* * *

As to replacing all images with a different image with a different name, probably someone has written a script to do something like that. There's still the issue of whether the image has the same dimensions.

[aDavid]

Sorry for my miscommunication.  And most of the text boxes are already set to auto-fit, and the images are close enough in size they should be fine.  Unfortunately, the only script I've been able to find only works one document at a time, which, I can't figure out the advantage of that.

[brianp311 · Accepted solution]

This is pretty rudimentary, but something like this should work assuming that the same file is linked across the documents. First you'd be prompted to select a folder where all the indd docs live. Then you'd choose the image file that you want to replace, then you'd be prompted to choose the file you want to replace it with. 

var fol = Folder.selectDialog("Choose the folder with indd files");
var inddFiles = fol.getFiles("*.indd");
var oldImage = File.openDialog("Choose the image to replace");
var oldImageName = oldImage.name.replace("%20"," ");
var repImage = File.openDialog("Choose the new image");
for (var i = 0; i < inddFiles.length; i++) {
    try {
        var doc = app.open(inddFiles[i]);
        var link = doc.links.itemByName(oldImageName);
        link.relink(repImage);
        link.update();
        doc.close(SaveOptions.YES);
    } catch(e) {}
}

[aDavid]

That script is exactly what i needed.  Thank you so much.