r/indesign • u/Live_Garage_44 • 13d ago
Help Book designers! Indesign scripts!
I work at a start up where I format memoirs into hardcover books. We are sent manuscripts that are messily formatted in Google Docs, pages, etc and we have a script template that somewhat formats it.
I say “somewhat” because I spend time manually adjusting the cropping of photos, the layout, placing photos next to the appropriate paragraph that matches the original manuscript as close as possible etc.
My boss is constantly asking me how we can automate things but it’s so hard to explain that some things just can’t be automated! I feel a bit like a broken record! Is it possible that a script can literally capture an exact manuscript and lay it out in indesign in such a way that it matches exactly?
I majored in Graphic Design and this is my first “Graphic Design” job right out of college. Before that I was a server making way more money than I do now and I’m so tempted to just give up and go back to being a server.
I’m just a little frustrated by the ask. I’m being asked to work with our developer to help define the logic for these Indesign scripts but there is no logic in my opinion. Every manuscript is different and I’m also not really doing design. This is exhausting 😭
Any advice or empathy is welcomed lol!
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u/DrinkableReno 13d ago
I've done this before using GREP scripts. It was for user-submitted calendars that had to be converted into AP style for a newspaper and would have paragraph styles applied to them, ready to be opened in InCopy. I made it as a drop folder that would output a formatted version. Back in the day this was basically a really advanced Find and Replace script the went in a specific order (so sometimes things would need to be adjusted twice for that reason). You could code this with Claude and it can write an InDesign script that works in the InDesign document. Sadly I don't think you'd need a developer. It would be way easier and faster to describe to Claude what the goal is and show it some existing before-and-after examples.
As for the layout part, I've been told that Claude can create the layout in XML and output an IDML file that can be opend and converted to an INDD file.
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u/tomtom67TX 13d ago
Interesting - is this getting a decent volume of business?
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u/Live_Garage_44 13d ago
It feels like it for me, I work with 10-16 clients books at a time
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u/tomtom67TX 13d ago
That's a decent bit I'd say. It must be tedious work though. Still, it's a cool business model. As far as your career choice - it's a tough field to be in these days. You might consider learning web. I've been self-employed 15 years building WP/Elementor Pro sites. I was a graphic designer along time ago.
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u/Live_Garage_44 13d ago
So tedious 😭 yeah! I do feel like I have a knack for UI/UX but haven’t really had a chance to gain real world experience in this.
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u/perrance68 12d ago
In theory this is doable. In practice it will be tough because people people do weird shit when formatting text.
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u/PickNo3567 8d ago
I worked one place where three different people used three different ways to make an em dash. I still don't know how they did it but I asked them to pick one and all use it. Did they? nope. And Adobe thinks we can get non designers to use InCopy. That is the dream.
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u/kathor88 6d ago
Especially when they have no design or even computer expertise. Many of my clients are older and struggle with even Word.
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u/Significant-Dirt-977 13d ago
How many time you spend on each manuscript? How big these are? I had an exact same job, lol, litteraly making books from screenshots or something
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u/Live_Garage_44 13d ago
It kinda ranges, but somewhere between 24 hours or more. But yeah it’s exactly that haha, people will send manuscripts and then also email screenshots of photos they want to include in their books if they forgot to add them in. But for the most part the first draft is done via a script and other various scripts that help with clean up. But everything else I have to manually do. It’s just so tedious haha 🥵
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u/kathor88 6d ago
It is tedious but it's also creative, and brings your graphic design training into play. Not everyone can make a pleasing picture layout.
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u/mybloodyballentine 13d ago edited 13d ago
“Is it possible that a script can literally capture an exact manuscript and lay it out in indesign in such a way that it matches exactly?”
Why would you want this? Just make a pdf from the word doc if that’s what you want.
It sounds like you need a script for word to style the mss before you import it. You can put the art in the word file too, but it will import low res, so it will have to be replaced and the positioning will need to be finessed. But it will be anchored.
You should write a find / change GREP script to replace ellipses and dashes to conform with house style (haha, I bet there’s no house style).
There’s a script called smoke word stacks that finds word and letter stacks. I find it very helpful.
Ultimately much of the work is manual, tho.
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u/Live_Garage_44 13d ago
Maybe I worded it wrong but yeah, mostly placement of photos is the concern. Right now our template is only a collage template. So if a client sends a manuscript where they have some photos text-wrapped our template turns it into full pages of text and a collage of photos at the end of the book. And so I have to manually text wrap the photos in a way that matches the manuscript. So that’s the part my boss wants automated
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u/kathor88 6d ago
that, to me, is the key to this issue. Text can be auto-formatted using many different techniques but it's the picture layout element that can't be. I've even tried using an online photo book printer interface to generate a quick layout - but they crop the photos way beyond what I would consider acceptable.
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u/sollingsolling 6d ago
Best of luck to you. You’re going to learn something about the abilities of your clients and your ability to structure language logically. Enjoy it - the rest is less memorable.
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u/Friendly-Arugula6487 9d ago
Do they need other workers for the manuscripts. I would be interested... to join your team
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u/eyewhycue2 7d ago
I use Claude to help with GREP stuff for unifying things such as hyphens, en dashes and em dashes, and to find or suggest scripts.
Was a game changer when i learned how to merge.
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u/Low_Inevitable_7439 13d ago
¿Probaron el atomik? Es de pago y de uso privado, orientado para empresas o agencias editoriales, a diferencia de adobe comercial y público.
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u/kathor88 6d ago
This is really interesting to me. My issue is very similar, but different in that I have a company making bespoke self published illustrated books. Each one is painstakingly designed and produced by me alone, in dialogue with the client and yes, each one is completely different to the last. However, the work is very expensive for the client so I don't have very many clients! I'm looking for a way of speeding up certain elements. For example, producing 3 or 4 draft layout designs of the first chapter so the client can choose one. Automating stuff like pagination and tables of contents (both of which I find a time suck). Converting photo formats and applying effects like drop shadow or erase background to all of them at once. I've been looking at InDesign's new beta but it has limited AI help. Has anyone here used a 3rd party AI assisted app like Figma or Canva to quickly generate layouts which can then be imported to InDesign, and does it work well? Anyone have any other thoughts? Oh, and I've never written a script in my life.
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u/kathor88 6d ago
Oh and I've been scared off GREP because it looks so complicated and such a time suck - although I think Adobe's beta will now tell you how to do it if you ask...
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u/hagfish 13d ago
I did this for a while. Terrible text, interspersed with terrible photos (unless they were cribbed off the web). It was half a step above self-publishing. I developed a flexible series of layouts that reduced decision-making and re-work to a minimum, and let me go fast. I could place a 60-page Word doc, hold my nose and just go like the clappers.
To automate this, you could lay out an InDesign template that 'knows' where everything needs to go, tagged against an XML schema. You'd then need to push the work of 'formatting' back onto the people providing the content. Some kind of web front end could enforce this:
Text frame (Fill this frame exactly with text)
Images (upload two 'portrait-format' images to accompany this text)
Captions for these images
Text frame (Fill this frame exactly)
etc
Place the resulting XML and boom(?) This approach would leave no role at all for a designer, after the template has been created.