Workflow Automation in InDesign on a Mac
August 16, 2005 12:29 PM Subscribe
We're looking to automate a batch process that can be pointed at a directory of image files. Those files will need to be inserted one by one into an InDesign template appropriate text changed in the file based on a CSV file, and then have the resulting document saved as an EPS file based on the original image file name.
So, we have a directory with images: 1007.jpg, 1034.jpg, 1101.jpg, etc.. Those correspond to names. For instance, 1007 may be Mary Smith. 1034 may be Janet King, etc. We can get the names into an Excel sheet or CSV or whatever. We can also get the files names into that CSV, and could probably even get the full path in there if we thought ahead (say assume it will always be in a folder named "Batch" on the Desktop of the logged in user).
We want to launch a batch process that opens an InDesign template. Inserts the appropriate image into a space for it. Change the corresponding text, then exports a version of the file into a new directory with names such as 1007.eps, 1034.eps, 1101.eps, etc.
It seems like this must be possible with some combination of AppleScript and whatever automation tools are build into InDesign, but I don't have much experience setting up processes like that (I am pretty familiar with setting up batch processes in PhotoShop). Can anybody give me any pointers for how to create this workflow?
Versions: Mac OS 10.4.2, InDesign 3.0 (part of the full Adobe Creative Suite).
So, we have a directory with images: 1007.jpg, 1034.jpg, 1101.jpg, etc.. Those correspond to names. For instance, 1007 may be Mary Smith. 1034 may be Janet King, etc. We can get the names into an Excel sheet or CSV or whatever. We can also get the files names into that CSV, and could probably even get the full path in there if we thought ahead (say assume it will always be in a folder named "Batch" on the Desktop of the logged in user).
We want to launch a batch process that opens an InDesign template. Inserts the appropriate image into a space for it. Change the corresponding text, then exports a version of the file into a new directory with names such as 1007.eps, 1034.eps, 1101.eps, etc.
It seems like this must be possible with some combination of AppleScript and whatever automation tools are build into InDesign, but I don't have much experience setting up processes like that (I am pretty familiar with setting up batch processes in PhotoShop). Can anybody give me any pointers for how to create this workflow?
Versions: Mac OS 10.4.2, InDesign 3.0 (part of the full Adobe Creative Suite).
This thread is closed to new comments.
for each line in the CSV file:
read in the id, name
tell InDesign to insert the image with the path /Users/you/Desktop/Batch/{id}.jpg
tell InDesign to insert the name into the template
tell InDesign to save the file to /wherever/{id}.eps
stop looping
close the CSV file
So that's how I would approach the code. I assume AppleScript can open a CSV file and loop through each line like that. I'm also assuming that InDesign can get requests from AppleScript like that. It seems pretty straightforward to me, so I would guess that it does.
posted by patgas at 1:31 PM on August 16, 2005