CS2 Multiple Photo Placement

[dhosier_rb]

Hi all,

Have a quick question regarding a possible Photoshop action. I have an 800 x 600 graphic that has two places to place photographs - it kind of looks like an album page. So I have this one graphic and I have 100s of photographs that need to be placed on top of the album page graphic, 2 at a time, then saved with an incremental file name. Luckily the photos are already rezied. Is this possible? I'm using photoshop CS2.

Thanks!

[Renegade]

The best way to do this would be to place images into InDesign and export a High-Res PDF. Simply place the background image and two image boxes on the master page, add as many pages as you need to, and go through the document placing images. This will save time and disk space.

[Klatu Baradda Nekto]

Greetings dhosier_rb and welcome to PsT.

An Action seems like a very reasonable way to go about making this process automated.

Since your images are already sized, it's just a simple matter of recording your Action, which would include placing two images and moving these into the correct spaces. Once it's recorded, then you can use the Batch... function to apply this Action to the rest of your images. The Batch... function will also allow you to rename them incrementally (giving them a 1,2,3 or 4 digit number).

So, the simple answer to your question is, "Yes, this can easily be done with an Action"... if you're willing to learn.

A good place to start is to read the PSCS2 User Guide on Actions and the Batch function. There are tons of tutorials floating around cyber-space on how to do both of these as well.

Here's a couple:
http://user.fundy.net/morris/?photoshop21.shtml
http://graphicssoft.about.com/od/digitalphotography/l/blps_batch.htm

Make some starts at it and then post your progress. If we can help you with any problems you run into along the way, post 'em here and we'll see if we can help you resolve them.

It won't take very long to get started and running this process. Once you get started, you'll be hooked.
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[Renegade]

Klatu,

I tried to figure this action out yesterday, but ran into a roadblock. I (and dhosier_rb too, I'm sure) would love it if you could explain exactly how to pull this one off.

First, how can you run an action Placing 100s of different images? Won't the action record the name of the image and place the same one over and over again?

So, I thought that the better option may be to make a layer mask for each image hole on the main background image for the smaller image to be placed into. Then run an action opening half of the 100+ small images; Select All, Copy, Switching to Master Document, Create Selection from Mask, and Paste Into (which automatically creates a new layer). After that action for image hole#1, run the same for image hole#2, then export layers to files.

I ended up with my main background image, half of the small images in postion for hole #1, and the other half of the small images in position for hole#2, all as separate PSD files. The problem I ran into was how to merge the three components into one file. It was easy to run an action pasting the background layer into the hole#1 files, then moving that background image layer behind the small image layer, saving and closing.

My roadblock came when it was time to figure out an action to get all of the hole#2 images into the hole#1 + background images. You can't Duplicate Layer, because the action records the destination document. You can't copy and paste, because the small image loses its position when pasted, it gets pasted in the center.

So, what would be the next step? Or, did I approach this from the wrong angle?

I'm not trying to be critical, here... it's just that this has sparked my curiosity and I'd really like to figure it out. What do you think?