Silicon Connector for Cloudinary User Guide

Installation & Licensing Instructions

Before installing Cloudinary CC Connector, close Adobe InDesign and other CC applications. To begin installation, double-click the installer and follow the prompts.

Once Cloudinary CC Connector is properly installed, launch InDesign to see the following dialog:

Activation warning

If you have a license key for Cloudinary CC Connector, click “Yes” to activate now, or click “No” to activate later.

License key

To activate the Connector license, select Activate from InDesign’s Connector menu. To deactivate the current license, use Deactivate from the same menu.

To learn more about licensing Silicon Connector, please visit the following website:

https://siliconpublishing.freshdesk.com/solution/articles/19000041208-how-does-the-licensing-work-

To Activate or Deactive later, select from the Cloudinary menu at the top of Adobe InDesign:

Cloudinary menu
The Cloudinary Main Menu 

At the top of the Adobe InDesign application, the use can also specify the max size of the cache, which allows connector to manage the cache’s size.   Clear Cache empties the cache.  Trim Cache is only enabled if the user has specified a max cache size.  In that case, Trim Cache will delete items in the cache to get it down to roughly 25% of the max size.  Items are deleted based on when they were last used, with items last used the longest ago being deleted first.  For Box, the cache will just continue to grow in size until the user clears it.

For further information on implementing Trim Cache, please visit the following solution article:

http://support.siliconpublishing.com/support/solutions/articles/19000104514-how-to-set-trim-cache-for-cloudinary

Opening Cloudinary CC Connector

From the main InDesign menu, choose Window > Extensions > Cloudinary Creative Cloud Connector  You will be presented with a log in.

Launching the Connector

Click Next, and type in your credentials after your default browser presents you will the Authorization Login dialog.

Login

If your browser doesn’t pop forward automatically, you may have to manually locate the active browser page to login

Cloudinary login

This will launch the Cloudinary CC Connector extension.  To logout from your session, choose Logout from the Cloudinary CC Connector flyout menu.

Cloudinary panel

Once logged in, the User can navigate to various Cloudinary folders to find an asset or document they want to use. The User can either select the smaller thumbnail checkbox for placement, or double-click the asset for more options. In either case, clicking Insert will place the file, open the file or add the image as a layer depending on your preference settings.

Insert Cloudinary image

If you double-click the asset and click the Presets button shown above, the user will have a number of pre-loaded image modifications to choose from before clicking Insert.

Cloudinary images

InDesign, Illustrator and Photoshop have unique Preferences options that can be accessed from the Cloudinary CC Connector flyout menu. InDesign allows the user to access Show Import Options on Place, and Replace Selection if the user would like to replace any selected asset when clicking Insert.

Preferences
Working with Connector in Photoshop and Illustrator

Cloudinary CC Connector allows you to download and work with Photoshop and Illustrator files, as well. If you wish to edit an existing file from your Cloudinary account, Choose your asset from the Cloudinary Connector panel and click Insert as discussed above. A copy of the file will be saved locally to the user’s Documents folder, in the cloudinary_cc_files folder. Once the download is complete, the file will open in the Adobe app being used (or place as a Layer depending on your Connector Preferences settings). Here edits can be made and Saved in Photoshop or Illustrator, where the user can choose Upload from the Connector flyout menu, and add it back to Cloudinary. 

Be sure to set your Cloudinary CC Connector Preferences to suit your specific needs as a Photoshop or Illustrator User. Will have the option to Open the file, or Add as a Layer.

Preferences
Uninstalling Cloudinary CC Connector

Cloudinary CC Connector has two parts: an extension to provide the panel and the plug-in to provide the underlying linking technology.

Mac

Remove the extension folder:

/Library/Application Support/Adobe/CEP/extensions/SiliconConnectorForCloudinary

Remove the plug-in folder:

/Applications/Adobe InDesign 2020/Plug-Ins/SiliconConnectorCloudinary

Windows

You can use the Windows Control Panel to uninstall Cloudinary CC Connector like you would any other installed application. If you need to uninstall manually, you can remove the following folders:

Remove the extension folder:

C:Program Files (x86)Common FilesAdobeCEPextensions/SiliconConnectorCloudinary

Remove the plug-in folder:

C:Program FilesAdobeAdobe InDesign 2020Plug-Ins/SiliconConnectorCloudinary

Network Considerations

Since Cloudinary CC Connector requires network access to Cloudinary and the Silicon Publishing licensing server, there are certain network requirements to consider. You may find that working from home, where there might not be a proxy or firewall, you can use Cloudinary CC Connector without a problem, but at work you run into errors when trying to activate or use it.

Proxy

You can configure your proxy settings in the SCCloudinary.properties file located in

/Users//Library/Preferences/SiliconConnector/ (Mac)

C:UsersusernameAppDataLocalSiliconConnector (Win)

This file can be edited with a basic text editor and is documented with definitions of each property. Properties should be formatted with key=value syntax, e.g. sc.http.proxy_server=proxyserver.com

Firewall

If your company has a firewall, you will need to be sure to whitelist the Silicon Publishing licensing server. The url to whitelist is https://licensing.siliconpublishing.com.