Best practices for exporting examples and scores for Adobe InDesign

• Jul 2, 2019 - 01:04

I’m about to self-publish a piano method book. I will likely be hiring a book designer who will use Adobe InDesign. The book is a hybrid of text and music, though music predominates.

Are there InDesign experts on this forum who can tell me the absolute best way to export music from MS2 (which I’m still using), to provide the best quality and most control in InDesign?

For my draft in MS Word, I’ve used the Image Capture feature for brief examples, and Export as PDF for complete scores.

I’m willing to upgrade to MS3 if this will significantly improve the transfer of the scores to InDesign (though I’d prefer not to). (I will be upgrading soon.)

Thank you!


Comments

If you have a bunch of work already done in version 2, finish this project there and then upgrade to version 3. It will likely make you next project go better, but will likely turn an existing project into a nightmare due to changes in layout that will happen when you open the scores in version 3.

I've never used InDesign, but I can tell you a possible advantage to MuseScore 3 would be the new "Copy with Link to Score" command in the image capture tool, which allows you to paste your image into external program with a link back to the original, thus facilitating further edits. Simply clicking or otherwise activating the link in the example will automatically open the score in MuseScore. This works with LibreOffice, and should in theory work with any program capable of accepting HTML pastes, but I don't know if InDesign would work or not, and in any case that might not be relevant for you at this point.

I just got an email asking me to comment on this stream because of my experience with InDesign. Mark Sabatella's point about being able to automatically update images in MS3 using "Copy with Link to Score" sounds really interesting. I didn't know that existed.

Here are some practical tips for using images or PDF files that have been created in MuseScore in an InDesign layout.

What file format should you use? I suppose you could use SVG format if this is going to appear in many different media (Print, Web, Video, etc) and many different sizes; but, me, I just export my files as PDFs. They work very well. As you seem to know already, PDF files can be linked into InDesign files just as if they were regular images.

You will need to think about what fonts you want to use so that your InDesign text and the text (if any) used in the MuseScore file match—both the typeface and the font size. Not forgetting that when you change the Staff Space in Page Settings (in MuseScore), it effects the size of the fonts, too. This can be a bit confusing because when you set the font size in the Style section, the sizes are given in points, when, actually, the font size changes when you change the Staff Space. So, an 11pt font may not actually be 11 points when it is printed!

I have found that it is best to leave any non-musical comments out of the MuseScore file and add them later as text-boxes in InDesign. This assures that the Paragraph and Character Styles will match the rest of the text. Also, it is easier to place these text boxes exactly where you want them in InDesign than it is in MuseScore.

If you find that you need to leave more space between systems to make space for comments, a nice trick in InDesign is to simply make two image boxes for the same MuseScore image/pdf, so it appears twice. Then you can bring up the bottom of one image box to the point where you want a larger space between systems, and lower the top of the second image box so that it takes up where the first one ended. Then you can arrange the two image boxes with as much space between as you like (see screenshots below). This applies equally if you have to put a page break in the middle of a single linked image/PDF unit.

Here is a Bach chorale with the PDF file linked into an Image Box in InDesign:
Screen Shot 2019-07-02 at 8.48.34 AM.png

Here is the same score with the two systems in separate image boxes and a space for comments in between:
Screen Shot 2019-07-02 at 8.51.17 AM.png

Another thing to consider when formatting the MuseScore files is what the proportions of the final book are going to be. I have found that it is sometimes easiest to eliminate the margins in a MuseScore file if it is going to be inserted into InDesign. The thing is that the InDesign file will already have margins, so margins that are included in the image or PDF file that come into InDesign will have to be eliminated using the same technique of sliding the image box edges in. Here is the hazard, when you have to fiddle around with the images to get them to fit into image boxes in InDesign, it is a bit tricky to get them to line up exactly the same on each page. Also, there is some danger that the magnification of different images can change in minute ways. Your conscious eye might not catch the differences, but the pages will look just a tiny bit sloppy. You want all tops and edges, especially the left edges, of the scores to line up exactly the same way and all the staves, notes, and text to be of uniform size.

I am sure there is a lot more to say about this, but I think that pretty much covers the important points. I hope I didn't make this sound like it is a difficult thing to do. Actually, using MuseScore images in InDesign is pretty easy and it's one of the (many) things I love about MuseScore.

Cheers, Jake Sterling

In reply to by Jake Sterling

I only added the "Copy with Link to Score" command a few weeks ago, when I was looking for an alternative to continuing to maintain the "MuseScore Example Manager" extension I had written for LibreOffice. The new command provides a way to get much of the same functionality as the extension, in a way that has a chance of working with other programs. Except - I don't know that it actually does work with anything but LibreOffice. Would love to hear reports from people who have/use other programs.

On the subject of downloading vectorized images from MuseScore, unless you are going to be enlarging these images a great deal, I don't think you need to worry about this. Really, even the PNG images that MuseScore puts out will print very well. The resolution of the PNG images is 300px per inch (118px per centimeter). That is perfectly good for professional printing. (The only time you need higher resolution than that would be for very, very fine art books and prints—coffee table books.)

By the way, are you planning to also make this book available in electronic format, too?

In reply to by Jake Sterling

Many thanks to all commenters on this post. Jake, in particular, thank you very much for responding at length; your expertise with both MuseScore and InDesign is incredibly helpful. I want to clarify my understanding of what you wrote and have a few follow-up questions:

First, you asked if I’m going to make the book available in electronic format. At this point, no; it will be a print book only.

For optimal quality, it sounds like exporting all scores as PDFs (even one measure examples?) is the best approach, and that my InDesign assistant will be able to manipulate these as necessary in InDesign.

It sounds like adding non-musical text (perhaps including titles and composers?) is best done in InDesign, right? I’m assuming that musical text such as dynamics should still be done in MuseScore? How about tempo markings?

Is there a way to achieve overall consistency in the layout of the music in InDesign? I’ve struggled to make short musical examples that I’ve exported as PNGs into my Word draft consistent in size. Will there be a way in InDesign to standardize the size of musical examples, or does this just have to be done by eye?

Would it be useful to standardize as much as possible in MuseScore, for example staff spacing, grand staff spacing, size of musical text, etc.? That’s probably a dumb question; I can’t imagine why it wouldn’t be.

In reply to by darkstream

Last question is the most important: yes, make sizes and spacing etc. consistent in MuseScore. Then there are no issues with consistency in InDesign. Not sure why this was a struggle in Word unless you did not in fact have things consistent in MuseScore.

In reply to by darkstream

Here are my responses to Darkstream's questions about using MuseScore files in InDesign

DS: For optimal quality, it sounds like exporting all scores as PDFs (even one measure examples?) is the best approach, and that my InDesign assistant will be able to manipulate these as necessary in InDesign.

JS: Yes, I think PDFs are the probably the best way for you to export your MuseScore files. Someone, either you or your graphic designer will have to separate the pages out into separate files.

DS: It sounds like adding non-musical text (perhaps including titles and composers?) is best done in InDesign, right? I’m assuming that musical text such as dynamics should still be done in MuseScore? How about tempo markings?

JS: Yes, definitely put the text that is part of the music—tempo, dynamics, etc—in the MuseScore file, itself. I would leave the heading information in the MuseScore file. One can bring the top of the image box down to cover them up in the InDesign file if that seems like the better way to go.

DS: Is there a way to achieve overall consistency in the layout of the music in InDesign? I’ve struggled to make short musical examples that I’ve exported as PNGs into my Word draft consistent in size. Will there be a way in InDesign to standardize the size of musical examples, or does this just have to be done by eye?

JS: Size is less tricky than I probably made it sound. The problem arises because of the way images are imported into InDesign. What happens is, you select the image you want and then click with your cursor and drag an image box to fill whatever the space is that you want to fill. The image size is adjusted to fit. To get your images to conform to a uniform scale, one must click and release on the InDesign page rather than clicking and dragging. This causes the image to appear in it’s actual (100%) size (fig. 1).

Fig 1:
Screen Shot 2019-07-03 at 11.27.12 AM.png

JS: First, you will want to move the image so that the top left corner is aligned with the top left corner of your page margins (fig. 2).
Fig. 2
Screen Shot 2019-07-03 at 11.28.00 AM.png

Then, using the Transform window (fig. 3), you can, through trial and error, determine the amount you need to reduce the image in order for it to fit in within the page margins. This amount is a percentage. In the example I have supplied (fig 3) this amount is 96%. (The "96%" appears in the third field down on the left in the Transform window.)
Fig. 3
Screen Shot 2019-07-03 at 11.30.14 AM.png

JS: You can see in the final example (fig. 4), that now the score fits the page pretty well (though 96.5%, rather than 96%, might have made it perfect).
Fig 4
Screen Shot 2019-07-03 at 11.30.38 AM.png

JS: Your designer will need to adjust all of the other images to that same percentage. In the case of my example, all the other images would be adjusted to 96% of their full size. Thus, all the notation and text imported from MuseScore will appear with a uniform size.

DS: Would it be useful to standardize as much as possible in MuseScore, for example staff spacing, grand staff spacing, size of musical text, etc.? That’s probably a dumb question; I can’t imagine why it wouldn’t be.

JS: That is really an aesthetic question, not a technical one, so I’ll leave that for you and your designer to decide.

In reply to by Jake Sterling

I am very interested in this thread.
To do this kind of layout work mixing music, texts and probably pictures, I would tend to prefer Illustrator to In Design or any other publication layout program.
Personally I use Affinity Publisher which I find remarkably well designed (It has just been released)
After several tests I find that it is the SVG export from MuseScore that offers the most flexibility and quality.
Here is a small gif to illustrate the convenience of layout:

2Muse-SVG-AffPublisher.gif

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