Drag Text and Pictures from Anywhere into QuarkXPress 6
QuarkXPress 8 will let you drag text and pictures from just about anywhere directly onto a QuarkXPress page. Here are some free XTensions for previous versions of QuarkXPress that let you drag text and pictures from the desktop and other places:
QuarkXPress 4, 5, 6 & 7
Extensis’s QX-Drag&Drop (Mac only) lets you drag pictures, PDFs or text files directly onto QuarkXPress pages. Amazingly, you can drag them from Adobe Bridge or the Mac OS X Desktop. Because they wrote this XTension for use with their Portfolio asset manager, Extensis keeps this XTension filed under “Portfolio Product Support”.
Matrix DragAndDropXT (Mac only) lets you drag and drop text and pictures into boxes on your QuarkXPress document page.
You can even drag pictures or text from a database or Web browser. Just create a text or picture box in your QuarkXPress document, then drag text or a picture onto it from either a Finder window (or the Desktop), or a Web browser or database. Conveniently, the original picture files are copied into a subfolder of the folder that contains your QuarkXPress document. It can optionally copy the original text files as well.
QuarkXPress 7
Quark’s new Quark Labs website has a free XTension for QuarkXPress 7 named “Image Drag and Drop XTension” that lets you drag and drop picture files directly onto pages in a QuarkXPress Layout. If a picture box doesn’t already exist to contain the picture, then one will be created automatically. If you drag a bunch of picture files, new picture boxes will be created for them and stacked on top of each other.
It works with any picture file format that QuarkXPress can import: Photoshop, PDF, TIF, EPS, JPG, etc. You can even drag pictures from other applications such as iPhoto, Adobe Bridge, or Extensis Portfolio onto a QuarkXPress page.
The XTension is available for Mac OS X and Windows, and its source code is also available for developers who know how to write XTensions.
One thing to be aware of: the XTension is actually named DragDropImage.xnt, so if you’re looking for it in Quark’s XTensions Manager (Utilities> XTensions Manager), it won’t be under “I”, but rather under “D”.
Jay Nelson is the editorial director of PlanetQuark.com, and the editor and publisher of Design Tools Monthly. He’s also the author of the QuarkXPress 8 and QuarkXPress 7 training titles at Lynda.com, as well as the training videos Quark includes in the box with QuarkXPress 7 . In addition, Jay writes regularly for Macworld and Photoshop User magazines and speaks at industry events.
Glad that you find the QX-Drag and Drop XTension helpful. If you’d like to download it, you can do so by visiting the following link:
http://www.extensis.com/en/downloads/download_search_results.jsp?productLabel=Portfolio&platform=Mac&language=English
You can also download a trial version of our digital asset management product, Extensis Portfolio from the same page. Check it out.
Jim Kidwell
Extensis