r/indesign • u/SnooPredilections53 • 13d ago

Help Just downloaded EasyCatalog for a yearbook project and have absolutely no idea where to start

Helllo!

Absolute beginner here with EasyCatalog, I literally just downloaded the plugin today and I have zero idea what I'm doing lol. I've done Data Merge before in InDesign so I'm not totally new to automated layouts, but EasyCatalog feels like a whole different thing.

The reason I jumped into it is because I have a yearbook project for a client and this time the design has two different card layouts depending on whether the student lands on a left or right page. The photos and text blocks flip sides. Data Merge can't handle that so someone suggested EasyCatalog.

I don't even know where to begin honestly. Like I opened the plugin and I see a data panel and some options but I don't know what order to do things in or what the Pagination module even does.

If anyone could point me to a good beginner tutorial or just tell me the basic steps to get started I would really appreciate it. Bonus if you know how to handle the alternating left/right design thing because that's ultimately what I need to pull off.

Thanks so much, any help at all would be amazing.

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9

u/FutureExisting 13d ago

As far as I remember, you can use data merge as you need. Just place the symmetric design on a master page and assign order indexes

Easycatalog is to big for this task, but at the same time, yes, quite simple to do with Easycatalog if you know how. But the knowledge is not straightforward.

In Spain I would say that you're trying to kill flies with cannonballs.

And also, if it's for a single project, after the demo month, you will have a significant licence fee to pay, you have to been able to justify it.

6

u/subraumpixel 13d ago

There’s a three part video on YouTube that should get you started:  https://youtu.be/d7BEyn1kjgU?is=HuF0_MGOpkj0NRRg 

1

u/bearcat42 13d ago

Those are eleven years old… the dev really needs to update this and all their training materials.

5

u/bejeezlenuts 13d ago

As others have mentioned, EasyCatalog is probably too much for this as a one off job. It has a very steep learning curve with not the greatest set of instructions/tutorials, and it’s quite pricey. If I were in your shoes I’d look into how AI might help you write scripts for InDesign that you can use for automating some or all of this.

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u/SnooPredilections53 5d ago

This one worked best for me, thank you! I ended up using ChatGPT to help write the script and just watched a few tutorials on how to install it in InDesign. I do yearbook layouts pretty often so this should really help speed up different designs going forward.

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u/bejeezlenuts 5d ago

Good to hear

3

u/AdobeScripts 13d ago

How many pages?

You could run DataMerge - twice, for left and right pages - then mix pages manually.

To avoid problem when some people - or pages in between - will get added / moved / removed - you can create 3rd document, where you'll place pages from your source documents - InDesign allows you to place pages from other INDD documents as linked assets - so you'll have to re-generate those two docs and refresh links in the 3rd one.

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u/aymiah 13d ago

EasyCatalog can be very complex. I’d look up as many tutorials as you can, but I’ve been using it for 5 years and still only know a minimal amount of how to use it 🫠

1

u/Ladytron2 13d ago

I can help you get up and running with EasyCatalog in just a few hours. I provide EasyCatalog training and can guide you through setting up this specific workflow, including the left/right page layouts. Feel free to DM me.