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Jason Burnett
Engaged
Jason Burnett
Engaged
Activity
‎Jun 03, 2024
12:20 AM
I had scanned a transparency with a series of vertical lines on it. I needed to get the exact size of the lines so I wanted to crop the image and straighten it. When I did this, I was finally able to get it to look straight enough. When I clicked on the Arrow key or Command-Alt-Shift-Click to drag my canvas around to get a better look, suddenly everything is undone. If I cropped the image (not straightened) before I press enter to accept the crop, selecting the arrow performs the crop like it should The same needs to be true when you straighten an image from the crop tool. Rather than undoing the half hour I spent getting it aligned correctly, just accept the crop and apply it when I click the arrow or try to zoom in or out using my keyboard.
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‎Mar 21, 2024
11:01 PM
4 Upvotes
Could you explain how to not transform, but just modify the dimensions of the text box. For example, when I draw a rectangle using the Rectangle Tool, I can easily click the Width property in the Properties Panel and type a new width. Then press Tab. Then type a new height. This modifies the width and height of the rectangle. If I had intended to apply a transform to the rectangle, I would have chosen the Transform Effect and entered my transform dimensions. There is no transform effect added to my rectangle, it actually changed dimensions. When I do the same thing with area type, it scales the contents rather than resizing the area of the type container as I expected. Again, if I wanted to transform the Text Area element, I would have selected the Transform Effect and entered my transforms. Instead, I just wanted to modify the area that represents the bounds for my Text Area element. Surely, there has to be a way to explicitly declare the width and height of a Text Area element without scaling the contents and without dragging the handles. Can you suggest how to do this?
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‎Feb 27, 2024
09:01 PM
Seriously? This happened as of the last update....because I updated. Sorry if I didn't make that clear in my post. Today it happened again with the Beta Version where a box appeared on my screen showing card 3 of 3 and the texct: Proceed to video. With a single button to proceed to video. No close button-escape didn't work. No back or forward arrows to go to other cards. One button option only. No way to get rid of the window by dragging it. Just sitting there covering up half of my layers panel. Eventually, I clicked the button and it immediately started a loud video with the same guerilla tutorial tactic that is nothing short of horrible when you are working late and someone's trying to sleep. I just don't get it. It may be a bug, but it is so inconsiderate it's hard to believe. But to answer your question, yes, I have the latest build freshly updated and haven't had this problem until now. I will post a bug report, but I have a feeling this is a feature, not a bug. @Ged_Traynor
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‎Feb 24, 2024
03:03 PM
4 Upvotes
I just launched Photoshop for the first time in a while. I use Photoshop Beta every day most of the day. I had to restart my PC so I accidentally just let Windows launch the default Photoshop App. Immediately after drawing the interface on the screen, a loud voice comes out of my speakers saying, "Hi my name is Carly, let me show you how to..." What project manager made the decision that Adobe should run ads for its features immediately with full video and audio when you startup Photoshop? How did that get approved and why don't they care what people want? I get it, you are proud of a new feature, but for crying out loud, I do this every day, I don't need some popup guerilla advertisement greeting me at 3 am when I accidentally launch Photoshop. Are they trying to push people away? Or do they just not care enough to even consider what their users want? Regardless, is there a way to stop this terrible behavior from happening in the future? Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.
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‎Jan 14, 2024
04:48 PM
Just another quick update. So I added the function declaration to the JS Document Strings and then called the function in the same window. When I closed the window, the function call happened and my pages were reordered perfectly. Thanks to you. However, I never saved the document. When I selected Create Custom Tool or Command, I got an error message saying I had to disable New Acrobat. So I select Disable New Acrobat from the menu and I'm told that I have to restart the app. Click restart and it asks if I want to save my document. I click NO, do not save document because I wanted to do it differently. It closes my documents and quits out of Acrobat. END OF STORY So I relaunch Acrobat and load my document expecting to see the original page order, but nope. It's the altered page order that I said NOT to save. Not only that, but I'm still in New Acrobat mode. Am I doing something wrong here? It really feels like Acrobat just refuses to do the most basic things like closing a document without saving changes or changing to regular old Acrobat DC from New Acrobat.
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‎Jan 14, 2024
04:34 PM
When I open the debugger for console access, it asks if I want enable the debugger and I click YES. Then I view Scripts and Console (which shows two boxes presumably one for each though they aren't labeled). It appears that the script box wants predefined scripts because of the UI having a selection rectangle in it. No scripts present. neither button below the first panel does anything. The second box appears to be the console. I can type in that box by clicking the pencil icon. But nothing happens when I press enter. I can even define a function and call it, but it's just text--nothing active. The only other options are buttons with no labels at the top of the Debugger window. One is an arrow--pressing it does nothing. The next is a green circle--pressing it does nothing as well. The next is a red X -- you guessed it- does nothing when pressed. Next, there are three buttons that appear to be related to breakpoints -- nothing. The callstack selection control shows nothing. In the Inspect portion of the Debugger, you can select various options like BreakPoints, Call Stack, Global and Local Variables. None of which do anything at all. Below it is a window that must be the "watched" content from the Inspect context. It says Variable and looks selectable. Does nothing. The pencil, new page and trash buttons do nothing. This is true whether I add fiunctions to the document strings or not. This is the JS debugger open in Acrobat. I have entered several lines with function declarations and function calls but cannot get them to work or give errors at all. I was able to reorder my pages which was the ultimate goal, but now I have realized that Acrobat won't print 2UP without adding arbitrary and unavoidable margins to your document. So now, I am going to try to script the creation of a new document that is letter size and automate copying pages from my existing PDF to the new PDF in a manner that puts them 2UP left to right. If But the thought of doing that without a working debugger or at least a functioning console seems pretty bleak. Still, I reallly appreciate your help and taking the time to look into this. I hope I am doing something wrong.
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‎Jan 14, 2024
02:18 PM
2 Upvotes
I have created a document in InDesign that I made 5.5x8.5 with full bleeds. Now I want to print it 2 up on an 8.5x11 page after reording the pages in Acrobat. So in InDesign, I generate the PDF with no bleeds, exactly 5.5x8.5. I run my script to reorder the pages like I want. Then I print the document to PDF using the Adobe PDF printer. I create a custom page size of 5.5x8.5 to accomodate the source PDF Then I click MULTIPLE. What is messed up is it asks for orientation. Do they mean orientation of my source document which is portrait or the resulting 2 up document which is landscape? So the closest I can get shows the preview image with one page on the left, one page on the right (both pages are portrait but make up a spread that is landscape). I am careful to print at full size, but there is still a white border around each page. I never asked for a border, my source document is the perfect size to fill up half a page and I am printing 2up on the page, why is there a border? I am so close to having this process worked out that it's wild. When I get this done, I know of so many people who will benefit from it. All I need to do now is eliminate the borders when printing 2 up in Adobe Acrobat while printing to PDF. Thanks for any help.
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‎Jan 14, 2024
02:10 PM
I got it to work by invoking the function call after the definition. Is there a way to ensure that it only happens once. There doesn't seem to be any indication about when it will happen after I define the document string. So I quickly deleted the script after it ran successfully. Thanks for any suggestions.
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‎Jan 14, 2024
01:53 PM
Thanks a ton. This is great but what on Earth is going on with the javascript portion of Acrobat? I select Use JavaScript and a panel opens with 4 options: Debugger Document Javascript Strings All Javascript Strings Document Actions I figured since I only want to run this script one time, I'd run it from the console in the Debugger. NOPE. I figured that I would add it to the Document Strings and was able to Add It, but not execute it I went back to Debugger to see if it would show up under available scripts...no luck, still can't execute it. So I look at All Javascript Strings and I can see my previous function was added, still no way to execute it. So I try Document Actions and it is a set of triggers-none of which work for me because presumably, I will print this a few hundred times and only want this run right now. What am I missing? How do I run my function defined in Document Strings this one time? Thanks for your help.
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‎Jan 14, 2024
11:56 AM
1 Upvote
I have 5 versions of the same book, but the last version was accidentally saved inside the 4th version. I figured I could just move it to the same level as the fourth version and update links. After a couple of hours of total choas and not getting links to update, I decided no problem I'll make a new book. I had all of the chapters of the book and the frontmatter and backmatter saved in one folder. All of the artwork was in a folder inside the parent like this: ================================== Version 1 ---->00 frontmatter.indb ---->01 ch1-name.indb ---->02 ch2-name.indb ---->03 backmatter.indb ---->Bookname, ed1.indb Version 2 ---->00 frontmatter.indb ---->01 ch1-name.indb ---->02 ch2-name.indb ---->03 backmatter.indb ---->Bookname, ed2.indb Version 3 ---->00 frontmatter.indb ---->01 ch1-name.indb ---->02 ch2-name.indb ---->03 backmatter.indb ---->Bookname, ed3.indb Version 4 ---->00 frontmatter.indb ---->01 ch1-name.indb ---->02 ch2-name.indb ---->03 backmatter.indb ---->Bookname, ed4.indb Version 5 ---->00 frontmatter.indb ---->01 ch1-name.indb ---->02 ch2-name.indb ---->03 backmatter.indb ---->Bookname, ed5.indb Artwork =================================== This allowed me to centralize my artwork and just keep addition editions as necessary. But when I go into the folder for Version 5 and try to create a new book, Bookname, ed.5.1.indb and then add the chapters in the Book Panel, it asks me to save each chapter. I don't want to resave each chapter, I just want to use the existing documents. Why is it asking me to save? The document is right there.
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‎Jan 13, 2024
10:36 PM
5 Upvotes
I have a 100 page cookbook that I need to print 2 up side by side on an 8.5x11 in page. Since this is not a booklet, using the Print As Booklet option won't work. I created the output in InDesign and printed the pagesto a PDF. I would like to now reorder the pages using this method: 4,1 2,3 8,5 6,7 etc. This will allow me to print 2 up double sided and original page 1 will be married up with original page 2 and so on for the entire document. A javascript loop might look something like: let pages=document.pages; let pagecount=pages.length; for (var p=3;p<pagecount;p+=4) { let fourthPage=pages.splice(p,1); pages.splice(p-3,0,fourthPage); } Basicallly it would extract every fourth page and insert it at the front of those 4 pages resulting in a new page order. Please tell me someone can help with this. It seems like such a simple request. Any help would be appreciated.
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‎Nov 05, 2023
06:03 AM
When selecting a gradient fill for an element in the Web version of Illustrator, the annoying context bar insists that you may want to affect transparency. Clicking on the transparency button pops up a slider that supposedly should affect transparency.
Though you can drag the thumb, it doesn't stay where you drag it and it doesn't change transparency.
It does, however, change the value of the opacity slider. But only sometimes.
It starts at 50% which is written as 100% -- error
dragging to the right forces the thumb back to 50%
dragging to the left changes the value but the thumb bounces back.
the cutesy bouncinhg value nox indicates when you have scrolled too far but is annoying.
the values change--nothing happens, no way to go back to fill.
This needs to be entirely handled on the right sidebar. That's where you should be able to access the settings, not the stupid context bar that constantly gets in the way.
The update UI for the web is a step in the right direction, keep it up. Thanks for your support.
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‎Sep 20, 2023
08:20 PM
1 Upvote
I reluctantly have to use Acrobat on occasion and I am in complete disbelief that Adobe would release a program this terrible. When I launch Acrobat, the "Home Screen" is displayed but the app is completely unresponsive. The menu's don't work, nothing. Occasionally, Windows will say, "Acrobat is not responding, do you want to quit the app?" and then it goes away as Acrobat pops up another ad for how to do something. Or a modal dialog box that asks if I want to restore my previously closed PDFs.....as if that should be asked every time I launch Acrobat. If I close the file, it should remain closed. Why hold up everything to find out if I changed my mind? It blinks back and forth between being unresponsive and showing ads (tooltips on steroids with multiple "cards"). I can't access the menu and can't load the file I wanted to read. I literally wait for 5 minutes every time i launch Acrobat. So today, I have to scan a contract and recognize the text. No problem, I'll try Acrtobat. I scanned the pages and saved them as TIFF documents. I press the create bnutton and wait for a minute or two before the screenappears that lets you select documents to add to your PDF. I click Add FIle (or select file or whatever) and wait and wait and wait. Eventually I get a file dialog box that lets me navigate to my two scanned images. I click the first one and after waiting for at least a minute, Acrobat says the file is damaged and can't be used. That is incorrect as every other TIFF handling app on my computer loads the file without a probelm. I can't even acknowledge the error because the app keeps going unresponsive. Besides the fact that it violates every single UI standard known to man in favor of an entirely new and poorly constructed interface, besides the fact that It is so ravaged by spam announcements designed to make you think you love it, and besides the fact that it is so slow that even Windows has to intervene to see if you want to poke it because it seems dead...besides all of that, it is the absolute worst UX I have ever experienced. I have an AMD Ryzen Chipset with 32Gb RAM, an AMD Radeon graphics card and I have been doing IT for 35 years and Acrobat is simply the worst. Where is Adobe's quality control? And before you fanboys start attacking me, it's not just me. Everyone at my office complains about Actrobat. People are always saying, "It's lunchtime, let me queue up my Acrobat documents so they'll be open when I get back from lunch" My partner can't get it to run on his desktop with an Intel I7, 32Gb RAM and an NVIDIA gaming card. So it's not a hardware issue, it's an Acrobat issue. Does anyone know if there are "cleaner" apps that can wipe every possible remnant of Acrobat from your system so you can do a clean install? Surely I am not the only person who has taken the time and the risk to report the horrible and uncacceptable performance by the latest versions of Acrobat. Any suggestions that are actual proposed solutions to the fact that Acrobat just doesn't work are greatly appreciated. Fanboy hate mail will be ignored and reported.
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‎Sep 09, 2023
12:37 PM
I was just mentioning that there are a lot of different leaves. Thanks for responding so fast, you got here before I could post that part. I may try doing it this way with symbols and then expand the paths and replace the symbols. I was just hoping there was another way. Thanks again for replying.
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‎Sep 09, 2023
12:35 PM
Oh, and a couple of things to start: About Blending: I have tried to blend along a path, but that creates a bunch of identical leaves. I want to have a bunch of different types of leaves that somehow snap to and orient to the path I have selected. Equal distribution of leaves along the path is also not a great look. Though this can be adjusted somewhat with spline replacement for a blend, it suffers from the fact that all of the items on the path have to be identical or nearly identical. About Brushes: I have tred the brush trick by asigning my leaf elements as a brush that I can paint a path with and though I have had similar luck to the blend method, it again suffers from the fact that it's only one kind of leaf along the path. I have several kinds of leaves that I have to generate to match an old image. In total there are hundreds of leaves that change shape and properties. The Goal What would be ideal is to be able to select a group of elements on the artboard then click the path to establish it as the key element (think alignment panel). Then click a button that either a) aligns them to the path without rotating them to fit the path or b) aligns them to the path, rotating them to make sure the remain in tangent to the path. Of course, this would set the stage for the "distribute along path" function that could either distribute the objects selected along the path based on their size or distribute the spacing/overlap between tthe objects based on how much space was available in total. And in fantasy land, what would be really perfect is if it had "randomize distribution" or "eased distribution" or "functional distribution" which would do the same for aligning along the path, but would randomize the spaces, or align them relative to one of the easing methods (think exponential alignment) or even better would be to let you pick from a lilst of functions that determined the spacing from a "functions library" of sorts. Some further fantasyland options would be the ability to sort and filter items along a path. It would be alignment, orientation (optional) filtering, sorting, and distribution. So you could select a series of boxes of different sizes and Distribute along path, using Filters (only boxes of a certain size/color), sorted (smallest boxes first), and distribute them by distribution method (exponential) with no spacing. Then you could save this alignment formula for use in other projects by one click. Man, I wish I knew how to write a plugin.
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‎Sep 09, 2023
12:13 PM
Apparently in After Effects, there is a concept of a motion path that allows you to align an object or several objects to a path. The path can even come from Illustrator. This allows you to move an object from one end of the path to another regardless of how the path is drawn. When moving along a curved path, your element can be made to orient itself in tangent to the path as though it were a car driving along a curved path. I haven't been able to find anything like this in Illustrator. I have a string of "leaf" images that need to be attached to a vine. The vine needs to wrap around a couple of other elements. I need to be able to orient my leaf items by their tail and attach that tail to the vine. Then, when the vine curves, the leaf is rotated to accommodate the curve. If you think anout how type is oriented to a path, this would be the same thing, just with objects, not letters. Surely someone has done this, I just can't find it. Is there any such plugin or does anyone have any idea how to make this happen? Thanks in advance.
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‎Sep 07, 2023
10:07 AM
5 Upvotes
Sometimes, Google Search really lets you down. This is one of those times. If I didn't know better, I would believe that Adobe intentionally obfuscates any scripting language references for their apps. But surely someone somewhere has a valid, functioning reference for the language model used by InDesign for js programming. And before you refer me to the Adobe Developer's page where I can download the Scripting file for InDesign, please know that it doesn't contain a language reference. It is a bunch of help files for various tasks you might want to accomplish. That's fun and all, but literally the files are so unbelievably poorly presented that it locks up Chrome repeatedly. Even with 32Gb RAM, nothing else open, and running without extensions, it still locks up. There is something terribly wrong with the files provided. But even if there was some way to effectively browse the local files, there is no language reference. Before you suggest thousands of great example script sites and tutorials, please understand that I have hundreds of tutorials and reference lists from great InDesign programmers, but NONE of them include a simple language reference. For example, the following site has the JS Language reference. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference Sure it has examples, but it gives the terms, the properties and methods for the term then an example. I just cannot find this anywhere for InDesign.. The biggest problem that I am having with InDesign JS is that there are a million ways to reference every item in InDesign. Some ways provide usefull methods that aren't available other ways. Without a comprehensive language reference, I am constantly trying to assert methods on objects that don't have that method. All of this could be easily solved with a simple dictionary. Thanks for any help you can offer. If you need some free example scripts or tutorials, I have a ton of them. This post is not about getting something accomplished that I can copy and paste from a sample script, it's about finding the language reference so I can write my own scripts.
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‎Sep 06, 2023
12:51 PM
I have a bunch of kitchen cabinets that I laid out using Illustrator I used the estimate that 10 pixels = 1 inch So I could set my 30 inch wide cabinets as 300px and it would work. This also made decimals easier because a 3/4 " board would be 7.5 pixels, for example. I assumed this was a 10:1 or 1:10 scale but I have a feeling Illustrator isn't translating pixels to inches, they are translating inches output to some other scale. I don't think they are considering pixels at all. What they really should do, and it would be super easy, is to have you select an element that you know the actual width or height of in real life, then tell the scale tool. It would do the simple conversion for you and could even start allowing you to use "scaled" values instead of whatever units you were using. So I could grab a cabinet shape that I know is 30" and tell the dimensions tool: This is 30" and it would find the scale. Add a button to allow me to enter scaled values in illustrator fields and suddenly it's super useful. I could tick that button and create a rectangle 60" scaled and it would be the perfect size no matter how big my original art was. Do I have to then resize everything to match one of the accepted scale values? How would I even go about doing that? Multiply my current pixel sizes by 72? I would like to e able to use the new Dimensions tool to write out the dimensions of my plans, but I am not sure the best way to do it. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
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‎Sep 03, 2023
10:07 PM
5 Upvotes
Does InDesign have the equivalent of Symbols in Illustrator? I would like to create a group of elements that I can reproduce throughout my document in such a manner that changing one of the instances of that group automatically updates all of them. For example, I have created a simple double-sided template for generating tabs. I have set the front and the back of the tab as two pages in a spread. I place an image inside a clipping path for the front of the tab. I add some text where the label goes. I use both Object Styles and Paragraph Styles to ensure consistency and I get the front of my first tab configured the way I want it. Now, to get the back to exactly match the front but in reverse, I have to copy all the elements and paste them into the second page of the spread. I then flip all the elements from their center coordinates horizonally. Then, I just select the text elements and flip them vertically so they read correctly. But when I go to make changes to the front of the tab, if I forget to make changes to the back of the tab, It's a mess. It would be great to have a relationship between the front and the back such that when I updated the front of the tab, the changes appeared on the back of the tab as well. I think of it is a symbolic link of sorts, where rather than pasting a copy of an element, you paste a link to that element. Then transforming the linked content (not editing it) doesn't change the content, it just changes how the content is displayed. However, changing the content anywhere would change it everywhere. So in my tab example, I copy and past my tab fronts to the second page in the spread for each tab position in the Parents Panel. I use transforms to modify the linked copies of the front elements to flip them around as necessary. Then, when I create an instance of Tab 1:4 Parent, I ctrl-shift click an element to make it editable and modify the front only. The back would automatically update. Thios would be great for thumbnails where you could have your source image and then the thumbnails somewhere else in the doument would be scaled down instances of the original. If your thuymbs are separate files, you run the risk of changing the image and having the wrong thumb file for it's unrelated thumb. This same sort of thing could be used for form letters where someone edits a text object and everywhere that information is needed on the form, it would automatically be updated bwcause everywhere else that was used, it was simply an instance of the original. Before I submit a feature request, is there some way to do this now that I am unaware of? Thanks for any input.
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‎Sep 01, 2023
05:24 AM
Simply doesn't work. I am trying to alphabetize a TOC based on Recipe Names and it gets all the recipes, but refuses to alphabetize them. In fact, as best I can tell, they aren't in numerical order by page nor are they in alphabetical order by name. It's as though they have randomized the entries.
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‎Aug 21, 2023
11:17 AM
So after learning so much from this thread about TOC, I decided that I wanted to create a master set of styles that worked in every document. I created the styles in advanced and literally every single object had an object styles and paragraph style if necessary. I even created TOC styles for each Chapter and different Styles for the Recipe Index and the front TOC. Then I rebuilt the entire document, all 10 chapters to be identically configured. I put meta data in ALL of the images (cutlines for photos and recipe titles for recipes). So I could live caption them. Everything worked great. However,now when I try to create the alphabetized TOC entry (Recipe Index) at the back of the book, it refuses to alphabetize and all of the entries come out in completely random order. I can't find any logic behind it. I get all the entries, just not alphabetically. Any Ideas? When I copy and paste the content into a text editor, rather than the standard \r\n endofline characters, they have CTRLF added. Any ideas why this would be?
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‎Aug 21, 2023
11:10 AM
I get that. I'll complain to the service that requires the JPG files be submitted at 150ppi. LOL Thanks for your response.
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‎Aug 19, 2023
03:45 AM
I found the problem with indexing the styles applied by the chapter TOC that I generated. Some of the styles were getting duplicated between chapters. So one chapter would have Main > SectionTitle and another would just have SectionTItle. By setting up synchronization and ensuring that only one SectionTItle Paragraph Format was used in all chapter documents, I could create the TOC entry for each chapter and allow it to title the TOC with the paragraph style SectionTitle. Doing this foir all 10 chapters+the final "Recipe index" allowed me to easily automatie the book TOC by simply indexing the SectionTItle paragraph styles across the entire book. In othoer words, I never have to manually enter the SecitonTitle elements for each chapter because they are automatically added by the TOC. The problem I am having now is with adding js. When I generate the final index (alphabetic sort, full page, based on recipeTitles), I want to insert paragraphs every time the first letter in the TOC entry changes. I wrote the JS to do it in CodePen so that I could paste the resulting TOC text into a <div>element, push a button and copy the result (with the new paragraphs added at each change in first letter). I tried applying that to the InDesign DOM and running the script fromt he scripts panel but it didn't work. I don't have my VS Code debug environment setup and the documentation on Adobe Developer's site is sketchy at best. Lots of 404 errors, terrible useless example scripts, no explanation of how toi configure VSCode. So if you have nay pointers or know of any good sites that explain how to access the InDesign JS API, I'm all ears. Also if you know how to insert a text varialbe that contains a calculation, (regex) that would be breat. I can create captions for the recipe images and I can insert the filename variable, but it gives me the document filename (with or without an extension). But using the imageName variable doesn't give that option, it always has the extension. If I could remove the extension when definitng a text varialble, my project would be somuch better. Thanks in advance for this great discussion.
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‎Aug 18, 2023
02:27 PM
I understand that it will be sampled down when I export to jpg for a web app that requests jpgs 150 ppi. I was thinking by sampling down the images prior to importing them, the resampling would be better (as Photoshop offers more resampling options) and the export would be faster and easier for InDesign. I was experimenting when I came across this previously unknown behavior., that's why I asked if it was the expected behavior or if not, was it a bug. What I find ironic is that the Export to jpg option in InDesign allows you to set the target ppi (and provides the common standards for web images (300, 150, 96, 72) as presets. Then, when you open the exported jpgs created in InDesign, Photoshop lists the images as their intended ppi and dimensions not the 72ppi and resulting pixel dimensions. The behavior seems to be the opposite of how Photoshop exports jpgs.
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‎Aug 18, 2023
02:14 PM
Thanks for the explanation. It seems weird to me that in the Export As dialog, you are asked the physical dimensions and the ppi you wish to export as. Then it completely ignores what you put in those fields and just saves the actual pixels without telling you. I get why they did it, but they could at least have done the math and let you know tha that the new physical dimensions of your exported jpg were ____ x ____ and the resolution was 72ppi. I, apparently mistakenly, assumed that the physical dimensions and the preferred ppi would be saved in the jpg meta data (like they are when saving a copy as a jpg) so that it would be easier for other apps to rely on the physical dimensions. I was experimenting with using jpgs in InDesign to make it easier to Export to jpg for a web app that requested 150 ppi jpg documents. It thought maybe it would generate the images faster if the linked images were already 150 ppi and in jpg format. Then the web app I was playing with could create an interactive flip book from the resulting images. Needless to say, none of this went as expected since importing the .jpg versions of the content were twice the physical dimensions and half the resolution of their .psd counterparts. I'm sure there's a reason why Adobe chose not to include the intended ppi and dimensions in the jpg meta data, but it still seems weird to me. Photoshop looks for that same data when importing a jpg, why not export it as well? Why would they make you "save a copy" to include the intended information? Why even ask the ppi and dimensions you wish to export if they aren't including that in the document somewhere? Thanlks for the information and explanation.
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‎Aug 16, 2023
09:03 PM
In my last book, I thought I would get ahead of the game by standardizing the size and resolution of all of the images I was importing. So rather than sizing to fit, they would come setup at the right size. When I did this with .psd documents, they would import at their correct size and dpi. But when I decided to make a web-compatible version by converting all the images to .jpg at 150dpi, they imported into InDesign at 73dpi. Even opening them in Photoshop shows them as 72dpi when Photoshop was the app I used to resize them. Is this expected behavior? A bug in Photoshop, a bug in InDesign ? I've worked around the issue, but wandered for future reference.
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‎Aug 16, 2023
08:57 PM
Basically, I was hoping to have the Section TOC (which lists hidden "Recipe Title" paragraph styles (see figure 1) where I would set the title of the section in the title of the TOC file (styled with "Section Title"). Figure 1 - Section TOC - Created by indexing only the Recipe Titles in each section.   Then, when all 10 sections had their own TOC styles that just indexed recipes in their section, I could go to the front of the book and generate a new TOC for the entire book. This table of contents would reference the "Section Title" paragraph styles just created for each section when I setup each section's TOC. (figure 2) Then I also index the recipe names alphabetically for the entire book at the end in the Recipe Index TOC. (figure 3) Figure 3 - Index TOC - Created by indexing all of the Recipe Titles alphabetically in the entire book. The problem is that I could not reference the automatically created paragraphs using the "Section Title" paragraph style that the TOC function creates. Instead, I had to leave the titles for each TOC blank and manually add a separate frame with the manually entered name of the section to apply the "Section Title" style for the book TOC. I wondered why the TOC generator can't reference the Section Titles created by the TOC generators for each section. Thanks for your help again.
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‎Aug 16, 2023
02:19 AM
Thanks again for all the help with my last project. It still has some bugs, but I am about to finish my ULTIMATE TEMPLATE with highly organized and uniformly applied Object, Paragraph, and Character Styles.. I just have a couple of questions before I am ready to use it. Currently, I have a scanned image of a handwritten recipe that I place (with caption) in my content pages. Why on earth does InDesign have you manually place the caption after the image? I like my captions grouped with my images and was hoping they would just honor the caption style when you placed a new image. (I know put it in feedback). I click the caption and then apply the appropriate Object Style to both the image and the caption, then group the two. I then have to edit the caption since, by default, it is the filename of the image (including the file extension). Is there any way to get it to drop the extension automatically? The Caption created when placing an image is a static caption. Is there a way to define a text variable that knows the filename without the file extension, so I could just create dynamic captions automatically? After I get the recipe image and caption situated, I need to hide the caption. Since the layer information is not included in the Object Style (which seems really stupid) and since visibility is not a configurable option in Object Styles, I have to manuyally manage hiding the layer with the caption. Is there any better way to make the recipe name (image document name minus file extension) dynamically appear when an object sttyle is applied? Also, do the caption settings pertain to each image or all images? If I setup a caption one way for one catagory of images (say photos) where I want the text centered and visible, can I setup the caption differently for other images using the Caption setup menu? How is that inormation stored/retreieved since its not listed in Object Styles. And the final question...when generating a TOC, if you apply a Paragraph Style to the Title through your book (one TOC with title in every section), shouldn't you be able to use that Paragraph Style to create a TOC at the beginning? So if I have 5 chapters that all have TOC (for their chapter) and the TOC is styled as chapterTitle, shouldn't I be able to then create a new TOC for the entire book that looks up all of the chapterTitle entries and provide a TOC based on their page numbers? To solve the problem (unsatisfyingly), I manually set the chapter titles to generate tje TOC or the book. I was hoping it would do it all for me. I'm excited to be wrapping this up so I can share it. Thanks again for all the help. P.S. Just wrapping up the tenth printed copy of the latest version of the book. Can't wait to try it with my new template Here are some pictures. Thanks again for all your help. . Recipe Book Content Spread TOC Cover (embossed using Cricut) Index Title Page Index Spread Photo Page Section Starter For some reason, the colors look terribly washed out in these pics. They are not in real life. The color is vivid.
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‎Aug 15, 2023
11:25 AM
Seriously at $80 per month for a subscription, I had better be producing a heck of a lot of HTML using inDesign. While people keep referring to this amazing and free plugin, it appears that they caught the greed bug and now they are charging for it. And by charging, I mean they are not just charging a one time fee to ise their script, they are charging $30/month for their cheapest tier (if you pay annaually). and $50 for their recommended subscription fee. That's per month, mind you. And in fact, that's more than I pay for the entire Adobe Creative Suite. While I am sure this has been a good answer in the past, I was hoping someone would revisit it since this is simply intennable for most small InDesign users who would like to generate some HTML from InDesign. Either that or Adobe should top advertising a service they only marginally provide. Any other suggestions?
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‎Aug 11, 2023
01:13 AM
@Robert at ID-Tasker I followed your advice and created the following structure as a Book: There are basically 3 parts to the book. The FrontMatter, the MainContent, and the BackMatter. The MainContent is divided into 10 Sections with single word titles of food groups (i.e. Breads, Meats, etc) I created the following documents: 00 FrontMatter 01 Appetizers ;;; 10 Cookies 11 BackMatter I added all 12 documents to the Book. Each of the MainContent sections (01-10) has a similar format. I created a header spread and a content spread. (See images) The header spread contains an empty text frame (for the section TOC) and the content pages are blank with page numbers and some graphic headers/footers.. Section Header Parent Spreads Sample Section Header Parent Spread-Contains a formatted (unlocked) text box to hold the TOC Section Content Parent Spreads Section Content Parents - With page numbers--all layers locked. Section Spreads Section Spreads. The Header Spread comes first, then I import the images into the Content Spreads adding Static Captions for each using the Recipe Title paragraph style. This allows me to then go to the header page and insert a TOC. I set the title of the TOC to the name of the section and the paragraph style to Section Title and tell it to find the Recipe Titles for content. After doing this for all content sections, I return the 00 FrontMatter file and generate a Table of Contents for the Book indexing the Section Titles (created by the TOC entries for each section). Then in the 11 BackMatter document, I create another TOC that indexes the Recipe Titles and alphabetizes them for the entire book. I'll label it Recipe Index. I was hoping to create an Alphabetic Index instead of a TOC at the end of the book. So, I'll manually Add the letters into the TOC to make it look like an index. Does this seem like a reasonable plan? I'm about halfway through importing the recipes from Version 1. So if there are any other suggestions, let me know. Thanks for the Book suggestion. Hope this all makes sense. @Peter Spier @Lukas Engqvist @Robert at ID-Tasker @James Gifford—NitroPress Thanks for the great help and information.
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