UPDATE 2018-06-04: This method of preparing coloured QR Codes has been largely superseded by a couple of techniques that I have prepared over on InDesignSecrets.com – colouring one QR Code and colouring many QR Codes. There remains no issue with the script as it still works and will still be made available via the website, and this article will remain for posterity.

Since Adobe InDesign CC, users have been able to create QR codes directly in InDesign. With the release of InDesign CC 2014, the Data Merge feature was upgraded to import variable QR codes based on data in the source file.

One bug-bear was that QR codes generated during a data merge could only have a black fill, and there was no way to change the color during the merge. One solution is to merge to an InDesign file and post-process the QR codes by changing the colors manually in each code, but if a file contains hundreds – or thousands of QR codes, then this is not an option.

My solution was to create a script that would create the variable QR codes with the appropriate colors first, but save them as images but linked to an updated version of the database that contains an additional field for the newly colored QR code images.

See the Youtube video for a demonstration of the script in action. This script is now available from the downloads page to download your copy.