Can I add a button that will "place" instead of File or Ctrl-D?

[griffonwing]

I am creating another booklet. This time it will be very little text, only city/state and church name. It will be an architects portfolio. As you can surmise, I will be adding MANY pics, and do not relish the thought of incessantly clicking File-Place, or cramping my fingers with repetitions of Ctrl-D.

Again, I am a newbie, with InDesign CS4 being my first venture into the world of InDesign. My searches through the preferences got me nowhere so I come to you.

I hope to soon get a keyboard add-on module, or even a Logitech G15 (which have come down with the new G19 out). This would allow me to create a macro that will Ctrl-D for me. But this will not be for some time.

Thanks
gw

 

[spamjim]

Are you aware that you can select more than one file to place at a time? It loads you cursor with several images. Each click drops the next image in the series.

 

[MarcusStringer]

(CS3 but assume it will work for CS4 as well)

If you go to edit>Keyboard shortcuts
under Product area
change it to File
then scroll down to Place
then enter you new keyboard shortcut like example F1




Marcus

http://www.midlandtypesetters.com.au

 

[MarcusStringer]

Or you can drag the image you need from you desktop window straight into InDesign

Marcus

http://www.midlandtypesetters.com.au

 

[griffonwing]

spamjim
- yup, i was aware of that, but i'm sorting through hundreds of pics on the server. If I had a dedicated folder set aside for just these images, then it would be easy to go that route. Whereas that's a valid (oops, not vapid) solution for many cases, it doesn't work well for mine.

MarcusStringer
- I saw those shortcuts there, but there alread is a shortcut (Ctrl-D) so I didn't think that would be a good place to go. I never thought of reformatting my Fn keys. I'll have to go through them and see what each Fn key does and see which I don't mind replacing.

- I was going to ask about drag-n-drop, but was side-tracked earlier. I know some programs use Drag-n-Drop differently than actually "import" or "place". Sort of like "Import" imbeds the file wheras Drag-n-Drop merely "Links" the file. I wasn't sure about how InDesign handled this.

If iD handle these the same way, then it's probably the best course of action for me.

Thay you both for your insights and your help!

gw

 

[MarcusStringer]

The drag and drop acts the same as the place function.

The keyboard shortcuts work so you can set up your own set of shortcuts without fear of loosing the default ones.

Simply click in the area for new key and type in you F-key it will tell you if it taken by something, and whether you want to override that function.

for example I have a shortcut set called "Marcus"

Where I have made F1=change to Lowercase F2=Titlecase etc. The rest have been assigned to menu items I access all the time.

You will find most of the F keys are assigned to pallets which you already have open, so no biggie if they get assign to something else...





Marcus

http://www.midlandtypesetters.com.au

 

[griffonwing]

Update:

I changed they keyboard shortcut to `

It's located between TAB and ESC. Very close at hand.

Also, I verified that when typing in a TEXT box, the ` will type out as normal, and not pop up the Place dialogue box.

So, for any of you that have a specific task that you do constantly, I would heartily suggest mapping the function to the ` key.

Thanks again guys, for all your help.

gw

 

[griffonwing]

MarcusStringer:

- Thanks for the advice. I wasn't aware of multiple sets of shortcuts. I'll have to delve further when I have the time to do so.

Regarding your comments about Lowercase and Titlecase; I noticed in the Text toolbar that there are 6 buttons (all caps, sentence caps, superscript, substript, underline and strikethrough). Is there a way to replace some of these? or possibly add to them?

For example. I can see where Titlecase or Lowercase would come up more often than, say, Strikethrough. You'd think they would have replaced it with one of the other two as the default. Or maybe I'm not in the field that required heavy use of that particular font feature.

gw

 

[MarcusStringer]

No, if they are in the Actual menu then you can't change what hard coded into the program unfortunately. I've been typesetting for 10 years and have never, In memory anyway, use the strikethough button...

The good thing about the titlecase and lowercase is you only need to double click on the word or paragraph and hit F1 instead of highlighting the letters individually... speeds things up dramatically.

One point of note:
Don't set you shortcuts to use the Quark shortcuts option as any custom ones you make will not work



Marcus

http://www.midlandtypesetters.com.au

 

[griffonwing]

I went back and editied. I created a new set, as you suggested, and put it there. This will help my work-flow greatly! Thanks.

gw

 

[eugenetyson]

What I do when I have lots of images is open up Brdige, which comes with InDesign and acts a bit like Exlporer (win) Finder (mac) but it's better.

What you do is set Bridge to be in Mini Mode and Always on Top.

When you're working with InDesign then you can have Bridge on the screen at all times with access to many images on your server folder.

You can simply drag and drop from Bridge to InDesign for any image you want to put in there.

http://www.doozler.blogspot.com/

 

[spamjim]

So all this effort and discussion has saved you from accessing two keys that are less than an inch apart on the keyboard?

If this is really such a concern, look to a scripted solution or data merge.

http://www.theindesigner.com/blog/episode-43-data-merge-video

Even if your graphics are in various folders, you can still do the multi-file placement.

http://blog.gilbertconsulting.com/2007/11/multi-file-place.html

 

[griffonwing]

eugenetyson
- I do have Bridge. It came with my Design Premium package. It's on my work PC, so I haven't have a chance to look through it very much. I'm planning on installing it on my home PC as well, so that I can actually play more with the programs and get to know them. I'll have to look through the dreamed EULA and see if I could legally put this on 2 computers, even though I will be the only one using both.

spamjim
- yup, to save my hand from and odd 2-finger combo. It's hard on my fingers with that Ctrl-D. Thanks for the links, but this solution is prime for me. I'll be getting a G11 keyboard with my next check. For only 40 bucks, I'll have a keyboard with 18 macro buttons on the left, with 3 modes, meaning 54 macros for each program that I'm running. I can have each mode be for a different program. I constantly use InDesign and Photoshop or Illustrator, as well as Flash. Only one mode should be plenty for me, though

Thanks for your help.

gw

 

[eugenetyson]

Yes indeed it's ok to put the software on two different computers - that is part of the EULA and is fine to do that.

http://www.doozler.blogspot.com/

 

[griffonwing]

Great to hear! I'll do that when I get home, that is, if I can pull myself away from Fallout 3 long enough to do so...



gw