Automation and Scripting in InDesign

In this presentation, you’ll discover how to make InDesign do a heap of work for you, starting out with a little GREP, skipping through the advanced automation features of paragraph styles, then moving into custom text variables, running headers, and other sneaky secrets. Next you’ll learn about scripting, with a look at the best of the built-in scripts. From there, we’ll take a deeper look at a script Iain wrote for InDesign and another one he modified for Illustrator, and though this isn’t a full introduction to scripting, if you’ve used JavaScript before, you’ll feel pretty comfortable. Lastly, we’ll take a tour through the world of third party scripts which can help with all kinds of tasks, from common to obscure.

You will learn:

• Document automation tricks in InDesign
• Clever tricks with styles
• How to find and run existing scripts
• How to find and run third party scripts
• How to modify existing scripts

Free Raffles

Yes, we will still have raffles. And, for as long as we are able to do it, they're free. All prizes will be delivered electronically. The Los Angeles InDesign User Group is a registered 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization. Contributions are tax-deductible to the extent that the law allows.

Raffle Prizes

Adobe Creative Cloud. 12 month subscription. Value $635.88 Winner — Mia Marzan
Collection of more than 20 Adobe software applications for graphic design, video editing, web development and photography including InDesign, Photoshop, Lightroom, Illustrator, Premiere Pro and Dreamweaver among others.

GoProof from Oppolis Software. 3 month subscription for 2 users. Value $300.00 Winner — Steve Thomas
Proofing add-on for Adobe Creative Cloud. Version history tracks what has been changed and by whom.

Suitcase Fusion 10 from Extensis. 12 month subscription. Value $119.95 Winner — Hari Prasad
Font management program that allows you to organize your fonts from one plane—including system fonts, purchased fonts, fonts synced from Adobe Typekit, Google fonts, etc.

Font Agent Pro from Insider Software. Value $99.95 Winner — Diane Schlesinger
Font management that allows you to organize, distribute and control your fonts.

DTP Tools Cloud for InDesign. 6 month subscription. Value $77.40 Winner — Michael Opsteegh
Suite of 14 different InDesign productivity tools.

Adobe Stock. 15 image licenses. Value $44.00 Winner — Robin Schiff
Royalty-free, high-quality photos, videos, and illustrations.

InDesign Magazine. 6 month subscription. Value $30.00 Winner — Steve Nashem
Monthly PDF publication devoted to InDesign how-tos, in-depth features, and quick tips.

About the Presenter

Iain Anderson

Iain Anderson is an editor, animator, designer, iOS and web developer and Apple Certified Trainer based in Brisbane, Australia, where he runs trainingbrisbane.com and the Brisbane InDesign User Group. In addition to his teaching and video work, Iain writes tutorial articles and creates training videos for macProVideo.com and the Final Cut Pro plug-in maker CoreMelt, and he’s just written a training manual on Final Cut Pro X that will be published sooner or later.