Dragging images from Chrome, Firefox & Safari
If you’re using Silicon Connector and want to drag images on the internet from your browser to your InDesign document, there are a couple of things to be aware of.
- Always use the highest resolution version of an image. There isn’t any way to accomplish a high-res/low-res workflow when dragging images from most websites. The image you drag is the resolution placed in the document. Be sure you don’t drag a thumbnail of the image or a low-res preview image generated by the website. View the highest resolution image possible, and place that so you get the best possible output.
- The images must remain accessible by the URL. This may seem obvious but a dynamically provided image may change over time, so to use a specific version, use a static version.
- Use images you have the right to use. Just because an image is viewable on the internet, doesn’t mean you have the right to use it in your own publications. Make sure you can legally use images you didn’t provide.
- Dragging an image from a browser won’t always work. If a website is designed in such a way that the images are not allowed to be dragged, you may be out of luck.
- Chrome won’t work without an extension. Because the default dragging behavior is different in Chrome than Firefox and Safari, most images can’t be placed in InDesign with the simple drag and drop. For users who prefer to use Chrome, we’ve created a lightweight extension to fix that called DragImgSrc. Note that this extension is highly experimental but generally works for this use case.