Integrating Screenshots into Indesign documents

Hi,I'm an fairly inexperienced indesign user,I'm trying to develop pdfs/e-books which will contain quite a few screenshots unfortunately when placing screenshot images into my documents I lose a lot of resolution and my screenshots end up looking rubbish,I've tried a number of approaches including the following
checking resolution is 300 ppi in photoshop and resizing accordingly
placingimages as .png, .pdf(browser screen capture)
set display to high quality (indesign prefs)
ifanyone has any advice as to what I'm doing incorrectly or could point me at a good resource I'd be delighted
Thanks
Carl

say I have to resize
There's no problem with resizing, which is what happens when you scale a capture in ID. It's resampling up or down (adding or subtracting pixels) that degrades a capture. The only instance where ID resamples is on export.
You can't get around the screen display quaility of captures. You might be careful to never allow resampling anywhere in the workflow, but when the captures are exported to PDF the appearance will be affected by the reader's magnification setting as the page is scaled up or down.

Similar Messages

Quality issue when placing web screenshots into InDesign

Please, please help!
I am using InDesign CS3. I frequently capture screenshots from web pages to place in an InDesign document as an image.
Without exception, the resulting image quality is lousy.
I have tried capturing screenshots with Screenhunter and with SnagIt. I have played around with the various options in each program (file format - jpg, eps, tif, bmp etc etc etc, resolution, etc) including InDesign. I have tried placing the image first in Photoshop and in Fireworks, saving it there and then placing it in InDesign.
Each time, when I view the image BEFORE placing it into InDesign it looks perfect. Then I either paste or place in the InDesign document and whatever I seem to do, the resulting image looks fuzzy and unclear, both onscreen and when I print (even when I select High Quality display).
If anyone can help, I can send you a document with screenshots pasted in so you can see the poor quality.
PS - Placed photographs or other very high resolution images are fine. It's the screenshots I have a problem with.
Thanks in advance to anyone who can help!
Fiona

I would expect the same quality from InDesign that you get from Word or another MS app.
>Web screenshots are good enough quality to place them in any Microsoft Office product, even when enlarged to view with a beamer on a wall, they can still look sharp...
Sharp is a relative term. :) Suppose you put a high quality photo in the same page as your web capture. Does the web capture still look as good in Office apps? Viewing distance also makes a difference. The farther away the viewer is, the better a low resolution image is going to appear. That's how billboards work.
You don't say in your original post what you are doing with the ID document.
By all means, send me a document to spammercatch at comcast dot net. With screen captures it probably doesn't really matter since you are capturing the screen, but in general it is bad practice to paste images rather than placing them -- you paste the low resolution screen preview instead of linking the high resolution image data.
Peter

Placing screenshots into InDesign

Hi All,
I'm running into a problem I can't seem to surmount. It's a very simple thing I need to do. I need to place a screenshot, taken from a Mac, into an indesign document, without it being pixelated or blurry. Should be easy, right? Wrong.
Adding the image to the frame causes it to immediately resize to fit the container. What am I doing wrong? No amount of changing the fitting settings seems to get it to original quality.
The resize content button is not what I want. I just want it to be it's own size!
To try and work around, I created a frame with the exact dimensions of the picture then placed the picture in the frame. It was still far blurrier than the original when exported. The original, if viewed from preview, is totally fine and crisp.
I've tried JPEG and PNG, no difference. I exported it through photoshop at maximum quality and still no visible difference.
In short, how do I get a screenshot from my computer into the end result PDF document without it losing quality?
I'm new to InDesign and hoping that I'm just missing something that can easily be cleared up. It's nothing to do with the display performance, which is set at maximum.

Pieman wrote:
I'm sorry but that's not true at all. The image comes onto the inDesign doc far bigger than the original image that I captured and as a result it's pixelated on the pdf. I'm hitting CMD + D to select the image, then double clicking the page. The image then automatically sizes itself.
I'm not sure why you're double-clicking the page. Cmd+D should just open the Place dialog. You navigate to the image file location, select it, and click the Open button. You now have a loaded cursor. Click the page once where you want the placed image to land. This places the image at 100%...or, it's "original" size. With it still selected, check the Info panel for its dimensions and effective resolution.
For what it's worth, placing screen shots has always been a bit of a tricky proposition, although you're correct in endeavoring to simply and only place them at 100%. The sequence I wrote out above (same as Bob's in post #5), is the way to do it. It's really not clear whether you've tried it exactly that way or not, but if you have, and the image is coming in significantly larger than expected, as you hinted, it would be worth the effort to get some empirical measurements. Open one of the problematic screen shots in Photoshop; call up the image size dialog, and check the dimensions and resolution. Compare to what reads in InDesign's Info panel. Post the results here, if you like, and we'll take it from there.

Script for replacing Image from a frame into InDesign document file

Hi All,
I am having an indesign document (indd) file with images and texts. I am using InDesign Server CS4 to run the scripts via SOAP.
My requirement is to replace any of the images from the required frame/s of indesign document through scripting (I already have frame id of which image needs to be replaced). I have written written java-script file (as given below): but when I execute this java-script on InDesign Server via SOAP, I get follwoing error into InDesign Server:
10/03/09 15:15:54 INFO [javascript] Executing File: \\Server_IP_Address\JavaScript_File_Path\JavaScript_File.js
10/03/09 15:16:01 ERROR [link manager] Link missing.; file:C:/help.gif
10/03/09 15:16:01 ERROR [link manager] Link missing.; file:C:/Documents%20and%20Settings/All%20Users/Documents/My%20Pictures/Sample%20Pictures/ Water%20lilies.jpg
10/03/09 15:16:01 ERROR [link manager] Link missing.; file:C:/Documents%20and%20Settings/All%20Users/Documents/My%20Pictures/Sample%20Pictures/ Winter.jpg
Following is the java-script that is being used for replacing image from indd's frame:
var myDocument = app.open(File('//Server_IP_Address/InDesignDocument_File_Path/Sample.indd'));
var tmp_frmid="1339"; //frame id of which image needs to be replaced.
for (var i=0;i<myDocument.pages.length;i++)
var objPage=myDocument.pages.item(i);
var objPageitems = objPage.pageItems;
try
var obj = objPageitems.itemByID(tmp_frmid);
obj.images[0].remove;
obj.appliedObjectStyle = null;
var myImage=obj.place(File('//Server_IP_Address/Images_to_be_reolaced_Path/ImageFile.jpg'));
var old_height = myImage.geometricBounds[2] - myImage.geometricBounds[0];
var new_height = obj.geometricBounds[2] - obj.geometricBounds[0];
var old_width = myImage.geometricBounds[3] - myImage.geometricBounds[1];
var new_width = obj.geometricBounds[1] + ((new_height / old_height) * old_width);
myImage.geometricBounds = [obj.geometricBounds[0] + "mm", obj.geometricBounds[1] + "mm", obj.geometricBounds[2] + "mm", new_width + "mm"];
var diff = obj.geometricBounds[1] - myImage.geometricBounds[1];
myImage.move( undefined, [diff,0] );
break;
catch(e)
myDocument.save('//Server_IP_Address/InDesignDocument_File_Path/Sample.indd');
var previewFile = File('//Server_IP_Address/Images_to_be_reolaced_Path/ImageFile.jpg');
app.jpegExportPreferences.jpegQuality["JPEGOptionsQuality.low"];
app.documents.item(0).exportFile(ExportFormat.jpg, previewFile);
myDocument.close();
I have very urgent requirement; if anyone have any idea; please suggest me. \
It would be highly appreciable.
Kind Regards,
Prashant.

http://www.automatication.com/selection-to-pdf-script.html
Harbs
http://www.in-tools.com

How can I place good screenshots into InDesign?

This is essentially what I am trying to do as well...Is there a correct answer that was given? How do know which answer is the one correct answer that is noted in the forum? My question is identical to the one below. My screen shots are off a website.
I am working on a guide in InDesign to distribute to our customers that shows step by step instructions on how to use our software. I am taking screenshots of the software and placing them into InDesign. I have tried this many different ways now and I can't get the images to look clear. I have taken the screenshot and pasted it into Illustrator, Photoshop, even Paint and then saved it as many different file types, jpeg, gif, tif, etc. It looks great in Illustrator or Photoshop but after I place the image into InDesign it looks awful. It looks blurry on the screen and after I print.
If I paste the image into Illustrator and then copy from there and simply paste into InDesign the image looks much better. Almost perfect. But I know this isn't the right way to do this and the images aren't saved/linked this way.
Does anyone have any suggestions?

Kitti-girl's Mom wrote:
This is essentially what I am trying to do as well...Is there a correct answer that was given? How do know which answer is the one correct answer that is noted in the forum? My question is identical to the one below. My screen shots are off a website.
I am working on a guide in InDesign to distribute to our customers that shows step by step instructions on how to use our software. I am taking screenshots of the software and placing them into InDesign. I have tried this many different ways now and I can't get the images to look clear. I have taken the screenshot and pasted it into Illustrator, Photoshop, even Paint and then saved it as many different file types, jpeg, gif, tif, etc. It looks great in Illustrator or Photoshop but after I place the image into InDesign it looks awful. It looks blurry on the screen and after I print.
If I paste the image into Illustrator and then copy from there and simply paste into InDesign the image looks much better. Almost perfect. But I know this isn't the right way to do this and the images aren't saved/linked this way.
Does anyone have any suggestions?
This old post from Dov Isaacs
http://forums.adobe.com/message/2938256#2938256
may be helpful. Also the whole discussion in the thread that begins with
http://forums.adobe.com/message/2936631#2936631
is worth at least skimming.
HTH
Regards,
Peter
Peter Gold
KnowHow ProServices

Clipping Mask for placement into InDesign document

I have a drawing in Illustrator CS3.
I need to "place" certain sections of this drawing into an InDesign CS3 document using the File--->Place command. These sections will need a 1 pt black border when they get "placed" into InDesign.
Pretty sure Clipping Masks are the answer but I've never used them. Can someone tell me how to do this? Do I need to create new files from the Clipping Masks to pull this off?

multiple Clipping Masks on the same drawing
This would entail making a compound clipping mask with many "windows". You will need to give the mask a stroke afterwards
Just save your Illie file with pdf compatability an place it into InDesign in the usual way (Cmd+D).
Like this:
Left to right: Artwork, rectangles (compounded together), select both, Cmd+7 and add stroke

SMG file (Solidworks Composer) into Indesign Document

Hello,
I am trying to figure out how to embed an SMG file into Indesign. I just took a Composer course, and we did it through Microsoft Word very easily through the developer tab and adding a Composer ActiveX contol. This then grabs the entire Composer file, animations and all, and placed it into the Word document, shown below:
My company currently uses Indesign for production guidebooks that show our production staff how to assemble parts on the floor. We are looking at going digital in the near future with these guides, and interactivity would be extremely useful. I have found this forum (Using SolidWorks Composer & InDesign? | SOLIDWORKS Forums) regarding a similar situation, but other than that I am at a loss after hours of trying. Composer has output options to HTML, but I can't seem to get that to embed either.
Please let me know if you need any more information. Please help!
-Becky

There is no 3D model format that will import directly into Indesign with the expectation of full interactivity. If you choose PDF as a format to distribute manual, then you can import U3D format into Acrobat to have a fully interactive model within the manual. But the 3D model won't go through Indesign. One note, Solidworks can export U3D format. If you choose other formats for the electronic manual, you could have some levels of interactivity with the model. You could rotate the view in SW, export into a image format, create as many views as necessary, then import images into Indesign using Folio Overlays or Object States to accomplish interactive aspect.

Excel file into InDesign document

I am planning on making our price list in InDesign so I easily can make it "nicer" than in Excel.
Today we have it all in an Excel file but how do I go about putting this info in InDesign? I want the Excel file to be the "origin", if I need to change the prices etc, I want to make them in the Excel file and then relink it to InDesign - if that's possible, that is...
I want it in A5 format, should the Excel file also be made in A5 then?
Today the price list is in one Excel Book and then separated into different pages (if that is the correct word for it, I have Excel in Swedish!). Is that OK or should I just make one long list with all the products.
I tried making an InDesign doc in size A5 and then an Excel file in the size of A5. But when importing the Excel file into InDesign it looked really weird! Numbers came as red dots and all the info didn't fit.
What did I do wrong!?
I'd appreciate all the help I could get! Maybe you know how to do this or where I can read more about it. I'm not that good at InDesign, still consider myself as a beginner...
Thanks!

Emma,
Have you gotten any further with your question? I am in the process of updating our pricing information and I am laying our pricers out in InDesign so that I can make them look "nicer" also. I have been doing research on linking Excel files to InDesign and it has come in very handy. There are some issues I have run into, however, which were mentioned in some of the other responses you have gotten.
First of all, your Excel info isn't coming in correctly because of formatting issues. When you place and link an Excel file, you can indicate what sheet you want to place and even a named range or cell range of that sheet. You can also indicate in that options window whether you want it to be placed as an unformatted table, formatted table or unformatted tabbed text. You will want to choose formatted or unformatted table depending on how you want your InDesign file to look. You can do all of the formatting for your table in Excel and place it as a formatted table, which works o.k., but you will have to deal with a couple of adjustments after you place the file. Your text probably won't show up because of the default settings for the indents of the cells in a table in InDesign. All you have to do for that is double click in your text box and select the whole table. Then you can right click or go to the Table menu and choose Cell Options. Set the Top and Bottom Cell Insets to 0, I usually set my vertical justification to center while I am at it. You could also adjust the row heights to make the text fit.
A wonderful tool to use is a plug in for InDesign by Teacup called TableStyles and CellStyles. I recently discovered this and have started trying to work with it. I came across it by looking around online for information and discussions much like this one. I discovered that we already had this plugin in our program files, but it was not in the correct spot to be able to use the function when I was in InDesign. I had to move the plugins from a Teacup folder within my PlugIns folder. They need to be in the PlugIns folder under Tables.
At any rate, I know I am on the right path, but I am running into a few snags that I haven't been able to find any information on yet. It is best to place the Excel files as unformatted tables when you plan to use the TableStyles and CellStyles to do your formatting, but I have found that it seems as though linking to separate sheets and ranges becomes an issue when you want to update a link. It doesn't keep the sheet and range information you indicated when you first placed the file....? Haven't dug up any information on that yet.
I hope at least some of this is helpful, sorry for rambling on, I just was going through the same thing and wish I had found out about these plugins, etc. sooner. :)

Inserting QR Codes into InDesign document ??

Anyone know about inserting QR codes (those bar codes that are all over magazines these days) into InDesign?
Someone I know is going to get me a QR code for a magazine advertisement I'm creating. What is the standard format for this image I should get to place into InDesign?
Also, can I scale the image in InDesign? Or will that mess up the functionality of the QR code?
(I'm delivering the whole InDesign file as a PDF to the publication.)
Thanks in advance for any info!

The standard for QR codes comes from Denso Wave (Toyota), the creator of the QR standard.
From the Denso standard on their site:
The size of QR Code depends on a module size and a symbol version. The module refers to the black and white dots that make up the QR Code. The symbol version determines the data capacity.
The area of a Version 1 QR Code is made up of 21 modules per side. Each higher version number is made up of 4 additional modules. The highest version number is Version 40.
For example, a Version 2 QR Code would be composed of a 25 by 25 module matrix. If the module size is 0.5 mm (19.7 mils) square, the size of QR Code will be 12.5 mm (0.5") square. (QR Code requires a four module wide quiet zone around the symbol.)
Other than that, your size should be tested after output with something other than the latest smartphone, because a greater portion of people are using older technology that cannot focus very close. I've found that a QR code of .875" x .875" to be ideal for a basic URL without URL shortening, using a chunk of plastic trash called a blackberry. If your URL is superlong, your results mar vary.
The iPhone 4 however, can scan a QR code 1 molecule x 1 molecule wide, if your audience is demographically hip enough to own one, by all means go for that.
/snarkyfanboicomplete
p.s. there are plenty of sites that will export you a nice clean vector EPS, so requesting a tif and converting it to a bitmap, while super fun, can be avoided by eps goodness.

Pipe xmp data into indesign document

Hi there!
My situation is: My InDes plugin calls a server-script which returns XMP-Data as text format.
What I want to do is: To append the XMP-Data without any local file operations to the XMP section of my InDes. document.
My problem is: Class MetadataPreference only provides a append method, which needs a local XMP file as an object.
Is there any way to wrap the text data, which comes from the server, into a file object? The only way, as I understand it, is to get the data from the server as a file and use this one with the append method.
Would be very nice if anyone has a good idea to get this working without local file operations.
Thanks in advance

This question might get more traction in the InDesign scripting forums. In general, if you can do it with ExtendScript, you should be able to do it with ActionScript. Also, you might want to look into the InDesign Host Adapters which allows you to get the XMP from a document, here's a recent question on the topic: http://forums.adobe.com/message/4008254.
Does that help any?

Database to InDesign Document

Hi,
Im a newbie to InDesign. I would really appreciate you guys to help me out of this technical problem. Scenario -> I have the page layout / images / text / frames,etc details in database. This skeletal view which are stored in database needs to be converted to an InDesign document. I have read from ID documentation that we can create ID documents using SDK / JavaScript / CORBA. What I really wanted to know is this. Can I convert the database details into InDesign document automatically by some parsers, etc ?

"control EasyCatalog through the power of cross-platform Javascript, AppleScript on the Macintosh or Visual Basic on Windows." says to me you would update the links for the InDesign file if necessary through a script, and then through that same script you would export that InDesign file as a PDF to a network location.
From that point there's many ways to make sure your sales guys have it. I think a network drive is probably the simplest. In any case by putting the InDesign into PDF you can't maintain visual fidelity and content integirty without having to juggle licenses. The added bonus is cell phones and tablets will support PDF, where with InDesign it's not going to look so great.
Ultimately your solution is going to depend on your budget. If you don't mind something with a few interim steps you can do it for essentially labour. The drawback of that type of workflow is that it can quickly become esoteric.

What kind of Video can I import into InDesign?

I've read that Acrobat 9 and newer can display flash video files within a PDF. I tried importing an .flv file into InDesign but it did not work. Is this possible to do? Also, are there any other types of video files that can be imported into InDesign?
The idea is to do a quick reference guide for a software application which will have an embedded flash video file showing motion capture of the application in action.
Any help will be greatly appreciated.
Thanks!

Acrobat 9 can display Flash (SWF) files well if you add the files within Acrobat. However, if you add the SWF files in InDesign and then export to PDF, the SWF files may not play, especially on a Mac. You're better off leaving a placeholder in InDesign and then adding the SWF in Acrobat to the exported PDF. For more details, see Sandee Cohen's entry:
http://indesignsecrets.com/putting-swfs-into-indesign-documents.php

Cross references corrupted after placing Word document into an InDesign document

I am placing a word document which contains cross references to headers and captions/figures within the document. They seem to be fine and function correctly in the Word document, however, after I place this word doc into my InDesign doc, I take a look at the cross references panel and notice that the cross references have been corrupted. It is wrapping the wrong portions of text from the cross reference destinations. See screenshot for a visual of how the cross references are malformed. For example the 7th cross reference in the list should say Framework Details, not "Framework Detai
InDesign Cross References Panel - showing malformed bits of text
Another visual of this issue can be seen if I view the text frame in Story Editor view, see below. You can see that the cross reference source tags (blue arrow like symbols) are wrapped around the wrong portions of text. The blue tags shoud be wrapped around Framework Details and 52
InDesign Story Editor
You can see below as to why I think the cross references are fine in the Word doc, you can see the same cross reference I used in the example above in the word doc and it is wrapping the correct portion of text:
Word - showing cross reference is formed corerctly
Why is this not being maintained after placing this file into InDesign?
Also I am not performing any cross reference updates after I import, this problem occurs immediately after the place of the doc.
Why would InDesign be having difficulty in importing these cross references? I have set up a simple test Word document with cross references to headers and figures in and they have imported fine. What could be wrong with this other particular word doc that would be causing this "corruption" of cross references? This is not only causing my cross references to break visually and lack the update capability but also I cannot export the InDesign doc to an ePub as it keeps crashing. I believe from my reading on the web that if there is only one broken cross reference source i.e. the cross reference destination that it is trying to link to is missing, then the export to epub will fail. So this is causing a massive headache for me at the minute.
Is there anything I could be looking at in the Word doc to try and figure out why the porblem is occuring in the first place?
If anyone has any tips or a possible solution to this I would really appreciate it. Even better if someone knows the reason why this is happening I can tackle it from the source and prevent it happening time and time again.
Thanks, Dave

Only bad experiences, Peter ...
I've seen this character shifting before on numerous occasions, both with cross references and with hyperlinks. (It's especially funny with hyperlinks, 'cause you can see that the outline box shifts one character at a time per each next link...)
The thing is it's not just limited to hyperlinks and cross refs. Dave's screenshot doesn't show bold, italics, or other local formatting, but it's a fair bet these are off by a couple of characters as well.
Dave's experiment of making a "minimal" Word document to confirm it's a persistent bug didn't work. I found the same thing: either a document comes in fine, or everything is foo-bar right from the start. There must be some internal Word code that InDesign forgets to count as 'a character position'. Without delving into the Word file with some very advanced tools, it's anyone's guess what code that would be.
I can only offer the one solution that works for me: in Word, remove all hyperlinks (which is what Word uses for internal links as well as for external ones) and convert all cross-references to text. Then, if the file finally imports fine, re-build them in InDesign. It's a cumbersome workaround, but slightly better (only just) than checking each reference, delete, rebuild, check next -- etc. (And with that the chance that your other text attributes are also off.)

How to embed data into an InDesign Document

Hello everybody,
I'm porting a QuarkXTension to InDesign CS3 on PC but, maybe, I've found a showstopper...
The current xtension writes some collected data into a document slug that is retrieved by an external application simply scanning the content of the file.
I need to maintain the same way with InDesign but I've discovered that the persistent data added to a document workspace doesn't stay all together when is more than few KBytes (everything seems to be ok until 2 KBytes but that's too little) inside the InDesign document but is scattered on many locations. Of course this makes the work of the external application impossible.
Is there any way to command/force inDesign to write the persistent data insidde the file in one single chunk?
I understand this is something unusual but that's the way that complex publishing workflow works and can't be changed in that part.
Thanks a lot in advance for any help.
Best regards,
Luca Severini

I think I have found a possible solution to embed my data in a way readable by an external application. To use the XMP toolkit.
Very interesting the fact XMP Toolkit includes the source of a simple command line tool that parses the xmp embedded into InDesign file.
The same source can be easily modified to get all the objects contained in the document aka database.
Bye
Luca

How to import multiple XML files into one inDesign document without copy/paste ?

I use InDesign CS6, and I have several XML files with the same structure. Only the data are different.
I created an Indesign layout with some tagged placeholder frames on merge mode, for automated layout.
Today for each XML file I have to create a new InDesign document to import the XML. Everything works fine. Then in order to have all Indesign layouts one after the other into a single Indesign layout, I have to use the copy/paste function.
I mean for example, copy the contents of all documents to the first one. Or add pages of other documents to the first one, then delete spaces between each page.
So my question is the following:
How to repeat this process without copy/paste function, knowing that the
number of XML files could be unknown.
Thank you very much for your answer.

Yes, effectively I would like to catalogue the files into one collection so i can save as one PDF and Print as one.:)
I know I could save each AI as a pdf them then merge the pdf's together in acrobat, but I have nearly 100 files so would feel more comfortable seeing them all together before print / saving.
My concern is that if I insert them in Ai, will the file resolution reduce? and will the ai still be editable and would it update the indesign file?
Thanks for the quick reply

Integrating Screenshots into Indesign documents

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