Prepress
Smart Image – new productivity plug-in for InDesign
Friday 26. December 2008 - DTP departments use thousands of photos and images every day, adding captions and credits manually. Most of these pictures, though, already contain ready-to-use descriptions and copyrights. WoodWing decided to put these to use in InDesign, saving time and improving efficiency.
Saving time
Smart Image, WoodWings new plug-in for Adobe InDesign, will save DTP departments many hours of tedious, repetitive and error-prone work. When placing an image in InDesign, the attached caption and/or credit text frames are created and filled with text automatically, all at once and with a single mouse-click. Saving just one minute per photo adds up to many hours per week.
Use whats already there
Most professional photographers and stock agencies add metadata to their photos in XMP or IPTC format. They add their own copyright information, and fill out fields to describe and catalog their images with locations, subjects and keywords. In most cases, credit information can be placed by Smart Image without the need for modification by the user. Descriptions may need some fine-tuning, but generally provide a perfect place to start. After inserting the image, the created text frames are ready to edit.
Flexible but consistent layout
Settings, styles and templates can be used to add the text frames according to company, department, document or any user preferences. Text position, alignment, rotation and size can all be set in advance. Caption and credits may be combined into a single frame. Even standard prefixes and/or suffixes are available, for example, to automatically create credits such as: “Photo by [author]. All rights reserved.”.
Erik Schut, President of WoodWing Software, said, “Photographers may not be aware of it, but from now on, theyll be helping DTP departments to be even more productive.”