Adobe gives you all the tools to make your contact sheets pretty

I held a 2-hour presentation last week based on InDesign tips and tricks. My audience was an exclusive group from RGD. They were rather attentive (either that or they were bored to sleep) and many asked where they could get some of the files I showed during the session. I, of course, highlighted the keyboard shortcuts file, providing all the rationale behind the changes. I also showed some of the custom templates and settings that I use for the InDesign contact sheets that are initiated through Bridge.

Bridge is the launching pad for many script-based routines triggering other Adobe applications. Photoshop and InDesign both have contact sheets, but I find InDesign’s implementation to be much more flexible. The basic template used by the script is meant to be a starting point. The idea is for the user to make adjustments to all aspects — objects styles, paragraph styles, colours, margins, etc. Once the user has created their own template, they can replace the generic look with their own brand.

keep reading

branding contact sheets

Making use of less-often used features; 1) nested styles to better format metadata beneath images, 2) adjusted margins to allow for custom sidebar, and 3) text variables for dynamic labels for multiple page contact sheets. A preview of built contact sheets based on the neutral templates.

I’ve updated the downloads and gallery sections of the site with the contact resources and screenshots. At the end of the day I wanted to develop a branded contact sheet that was still generic enough that I could share with others. The downloads are grouped based on colour and orientation. I’ve also included the sample images and sample PDFs. Unfortunately I can’t distribute the font that I used in the sidebar (Myriad Pro Light Condensed).

• colours – black / gray / white
• orientation – portrait / landscape
• fitting options – fill frame proportionally / fit content proportionally

resource around the net

I’ve also utilized some great resources around the net. Special thanks to all of them for helping me dig into the various possibilities.

• blogs.adobe.com/scratchdisk
  • allowing InDesign documents (CS3, CS4) to be included in contact sheets in addition to the regular fare of images formats.
• layersmagazine.com
  • customizing margins to allow for sidebars, header, etc.
• blog.gilbertconsulting.com
  • adjustments made to the Bridge script that was bundled in CS3. He also includes links to other related scripts and his InDesign Magazine article
• creativescripting.net
  • Bob Stucky, original creator of the Bridge-based script, is working on a CS4 version on his own. Adobe is really trying to push the enhanced web and PDF galleries provided by Bridge CS4. In doing so, they omitted the InDesign and Photoshop scripts from Bridge. Bob is rebuilding the InDesign contact sheet script from the ground up and is selling it on his website. It’s currently in beta

It’s important to think outside the box. Aside from colour variations, I made some enhancements to the base template. For some screenshots, check out the gallery

• custom look metadata
• stroked images not their graphic frames
• running header for multi-page contact sheets
• dynamic footer information

If you have any questions on how I built any part of the templates, drop me a line.

March 2, 2009
Filed Under all

I provide an interactive PDF, as well as the native editable InDesign document. This allows folks to make changes once they’ve come up with their own modified shortcuts. It’s not much to go through and make the changes manually but wouldn’t it be nice if a script or plug-in could generate the new file automagically (I love that word)?

The InDesign document could act as a template and have the automation feed it the changes. I had a very brief conversation with a good ol’ InDesign celeb. I hope to connect with them again in the near future because I would love to provide users with that ability.

In the meantime, if there are any serious souls out there willing to partake in working on a solution drop me a line.

I’d appreciate any feedback on the topic. Let me know peoples…

We are starting the transition by duplicating this blog, which can be found at blog.loop.ca. Eventually it will start to fill up with many resources, including tips and tricks, short video clips, reference materials mentioned in our seminars and training sessions, and more.

That being said, this will remain homebase for the InDesign shortcuts. So make sure to swing by Loop’s site to see the progress. By the way, to access the blog you’ll need to plug in blog.loop.ca yourself as there isn’t any navigation from the existing site.

In hopes of keeping this silly l’il blog worth coming to, I’ve decided to make mention of the various custom shortcuts I’ve added over time. This will give all of you an idea of what and why I made the changes I did.

First stop, switching tools while still within a text frame. This was one of the very first amendments I made to my list of customized shortcuts. How many times have you been editing text and wanted to quickly switch to the Preview screen mode? Yes, I realize moving your mouse over to the Screen Mode button on the bottom of the Tools panel isn’t exactly stressful. However, being able to hit a quick shortcut to toggle saves me the grief.

I work predominantly with Mac OS X, and so I have a whole modifier key to my disposal — the Ctrl key (expecting the responses from Windows users to come in). With the Ctrl key in hand I gladly append new shortcuts to all my Tools. All of the Tools use a single character shortcut, i.e. the letter T for the Type Tool, this makes it difficult to switch out to another tool while sitting inside a text frame editing text…

keep reading

Some of the more useful amendments include:

• Ctrl+W, toggle between Normal and last-used Preview screen modes
• Ctrl+I, Eyedropper Tool for quick sampling/applying of text formatting
• Ctrl+D, resets the fill and stroke of the selected text
• Ctrl+X, swap fill and stroke activation
• Ctrl+Shift+X, swap fill and stroke of selected text
• Ctrl+V, Selection Tool
• Ctrl+A, Direct Selection Tool
• Ctrl+T, Type Tool (especially when activating the Eyedropper Tool)

preserving originals…

Like most of the shortcuts I’ve added over the years, the beautiful thing is they are additions, and not replacements, of the original shortcuts. In other words, anyone can sit at my machine and happily use the original ones without any confusion.

you can specify the context in which the shortcut will be invoked

contextual shortcuts…

If I wanted to get extra specific I could have taken advantage of InDesign’s ability to recognize the context in which a shortcut would be invoked. I had the option of changing the context to Text instead of Default. The benefit would be that I could still use the above added shortcuts for other commands within InDesign, when not inside a text frame.

relocated download link for shortcuts…

Folks were having trouble finding the download links for the shortcut file. In the shortcut section, I moved the download links to the top. I originally had them on the bottom to hopefully encourage people to read through the little blurb, but alas, there seems to be little point. If they want to read it they will. No pressure… hehe

added downloads page…

It will house all the downloads I mention in my posts. At the moment I added the shortcut files, broken down into individual elements. Based on requests, I also added the older CS2 version for the Mac and Windows users.

I’m working on updating my compact version of the shortcut file as well. Instead of the 14-page original, it’s condensed down into 7 pages. Instead of including every command, known to man, I trimmed it back to only list the commands that actually had a default shortcut assigned to them.

updated

I’m out of practice and am now reviewing my css styles. I realize I got carried away, overcomplicating things with too many child tags. It appears that I cleared up some of the outstanding issues for now.

• search field is working again
• gallery page now displays thumbnails properly in IE
• sidebar now displays properly in IE

There are many great InDesign sites, and I wanted to keep InDesign in the name. I’ve created a reference document (which motivated this site) that contains all the InDesign commands and their keyboard shortcuts. The total count of commands for IDCS3 is over 1200. So, while the name might not make too much sense, hopefully the site will be join the ranks of the InDesign-prefixed greats like indesignsecrets.com, theindesigner.com, indesigncentral.com.

Over the years I’ve created and evolved my little document into it current iteration. I’ve shared with peers, trainees, seminar attendees, family and friends. I’ve distributed it through file-hosting sites like box.net, through Adobe Exchange, and most recently a dedicated page within Loop’s (current employer) website. 

Thankfully, it’s been mentioned and recognized by some of the InDesign greats, namely Tim Cole, Steve Werner, and Sebastian Distefano. The last of which I owe much gratitude for encouraging my efforts.

I was annoyed by the lack of a decent cheat sheet for the many shortcuts within InDesign. Yes, there was the Adobe InDesign CS3 Help Center, which was great. Yes, I could have InDesign generate a text file that contained all the commands. I decided to use that text file as a starting point…

keep reading

The text file was not very readable and, in my opinion, was not organized in logical manner. By reworking that raw text file within InDesign I started to explore InDesign’s various features. It provided an opportunity to discover and incorporate various techniques and tips that I had picked up from many sources.

As I shared my reference document, I had to consider others. I wanted to provide folks with more than just a PDF. I wanted people to jump into the guts of the native InDesign document. I wanted them to explore. I wanted them to make their own change, their own custom shortcuts. With that in mind, I needed to organize the InDesign document so it could be interpreted by others.

As people have discovered my little project they’ve also formulated many questions:

• Why did I name / organize my styles the way I did?
• Why did I set the shortcuts the way I did?
• How did I create the alternating rows effect?
• How did I save so much time creating nested / next styles?

With the list of questions growing, I felt this website could hold the answers, in the form of blog entries. Bear with me as this blog hopefully matures into something great and worthy of finding a home in your list of bookmarks. Entries will start text-based with the necessary screenshots. Down the road, I hope to introduce screencasts.

Again, the details of the InDesign document, as well as the corresponding interactive PDF, can be found in the shortcuts section. I hope the contents of my posts will include:

• my favourite shortcuts
• techniques I used, and their references (site, magazine, peer)
• document structure

I’m not making any promises on the frequency of future posts, as I have a full time job, a social life, plus a beautiful wife (as of September 13th, 2008) that deserves much more attention than I give here. Here’s to looking to a potentially worthwhile adventure.

I’m just experimenting with formatting blockquote. You can safely ignore my nonsense…

As a result, it’s much more difficult to come up with a personalized list of keyboard shortcuts that are not already in use by other commands within Adobe InDesign…

keep reading”

• Mac’s command key to Window’s control key
• Mac’s option key to Window’s alt key
• Mac’s shift key to Window’s shift key
• Mac’s control key to Window’s… ummm, errrr…

As Bob mentions below, there is a fourth key on the Windows side. Appropriately named the Windows key. Not being a Windows expert, I believe this is relegated to system-wide function, and cannot be utilized by applications like Adobe InDesign.

The beautiful part, on the Mac side, is that the keyboard shortcuts involving the ctrl key rarely, if ever, are programmed within Mac applications. In this case, it opens up an a rather large range of possibilities for those running good ol’ Mac OS X. Sadly, that same opportunity is not available to Windows users.