⚡ Click on each animation to see all the details.

1. Cloning a Cover Template

Given an active HurryCover document (in InDesign), the script automatically considers it at startup and allows you to update it. But what if, instead of modifying the existing book cover, you want to create a new template based on the same dimensions and settings? Simply hold down Ctrl (Windows) / Cmd (Mac) and the Update button will become New.

1. Cloning a Cover Template.


2. Using InDesign Color Preferences

HurryCover offers you a set of fine-tuned colors to indicate fold guides, axes and margins — and you can freely customize these colors from the main dialog. But you can also tell the program that, whenever it has to create a new cover, it should preset guides/margins colors to those defined in InDesign's own Guides & Pasteboard preferences panel (rather than hC internal settings.) To pre-establish this mechanism, turn on Preferences ⏵ Guides/Marks ⏵ Prefer InDesign Colors and restart HurryCover.

2. Using InDesign Color Preferences.


3. Working the Book Spine in 90° Preview

Very few InDesign scripts support advanced layout transformations in Rotated Spread View mode. This is not a problem for HurryCover! Hence, in InDesign you can work on the book spine area with respect to its reading direction, while editing the template via hC without going back to the standard orientation of the page.

3. Working the Book Spine without relaxing the 90° Preview.


4. One-off Explicit Measurement Entries

The measurement units block, in HurryCover, governs the consistent display and processing of cover dimensions. (And with just one click, you can uniformly switch to another reference unit.) However, there are times when you want to enter a particular dimension in a different, explicitly specified unit. Then enter the value with its own unit (mm, pt, in, pc, ag…), your input will be immediately interpreted and converted.

4. One-off Explicit Measurement Entries.


5. Getting Printer Marks for the Hinge

When the hinge (gutter) coincides with the standard margin of the template, this line is simply indicated by a “margin guide” — in the InDesign sense — not a printer's mark. If in this context you want an additional mark to be printed, just deactivate the link between Side Margin and Hinge in the Margins panel.

5. Getting Printer Marks for the Hinge.


6. Advanced Metadata

HurryCover's Metadata panel allows you to specify essential information such as title, author, etc., but also more advanced identification data such as publisher, series, ISBN number, keywords. You can turn on/off, via a checkbox, the display of certain fields in the footer. The most specialized data conforms to Dublin Core vocabulary and is reflected in the Raw Data section of InDesign's XMP dialog.

6. Advanced Metadata.

Note. — The HurryCover ↔ XMP gateway is bidirectional: any changes made from InDesign to the current document are reflected in hC, and vice versa.


7. Adding Axial Guides

The option Preferences ⏵ Guides/Marks ⏵ Axes allows you to get extra guides at the center of each layout region. Unlike other guides (edges and/or margins), axes are not ‘magnetizable’, meaning that the Auto Layout feature does not snap objects to axes. Axes are handy tools for judging the internal symmetry of your design.

7. Adding Axial Guides.


8. Export: Custom Weight/Color Border

HurryCover's Export module generates PNG and/or JPEG thumbnails for each selected cover element. It is then possible to add a border of predefined thickness (weight) and color. A simple trick is to ‘pick’ a dominant color from the artwork and to apply its #RRGGBB code.

8. Exporting with Custom Weight/Color Border.


Articles and tutorials to discover (in various languages):

Crear cubiertas en InDesign (ES)Iván Gómez, Profeivan (YouTube)

Hurry Cover 3 has it ‘covered’ (EN)Colin Flashman, Colecandoo!

X/indiscripts (EN/FR)