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Dynamically Insert Pictures and Objects


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Hello everyone. Thanks for helping move this along.  I'm doing great.  I placed 5 random images on Page 1 and and one more image in the first location (top left) of Page 2.  I also created a unique Text Name in the text box underneath each image.  I was able to successfully insert a new image and new text block on page one and it beautifully moved everything along, including flowing onto Page 2.  There was one glitch. The first image on Page 2 did not move, although its' text box did.  This may have been my error so I'll relook it tomorrow.  It's 7 PM Sunday where I am (Gulf Shores, Alabama, USA) so I suspect it's about 1 AM on Monday where you are. I'll continue working on this tomorrow.

 

Lagarto thanks for the 10 pages! I was already going to suggest that you might submit something like this to Affinity to include as a template in future editions.  This job I'm doing is for a Bible Study class at a Baptist church here.  We have about 60 people in the class.  But if I"m fortunate enough to book the entire church, I would need to create a Directory with 1,000 or more images!  So this is really important.  And there are so many similar projects that your users could use this for, ie school yearbooks, sports and team photos, etc. Thanks again and I'll check back tomorrow. 

two images.png

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I've finally moved both a picture frame and a text box sucessfully and everything flowed perfectly!  But when I moved the first picture frame, no frame was created in its' place.  I had to Add and Asset and then use the Place Image Tool to put a picture in the new Frame.  Here's the big question: If on a later date I need to add another person in a row above the one I've just added someone to, will the flowing work for the new person and corresponding text block? In other words, when I first created the new Picture Frame and Text Block for the first new person I added, did that Picture Frame and Text Block automatically join the AutoFlow sequence?  If not, please advise how to configure that.  

Successful Reposition.png

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15 hours ago, BlueSailing said:

when I moved the first picture frame, no frame was created in its' place

Moving frames is not the idea of this exercise; you should have readymade frames and adding text just makes text jump to the next frame when text is formatted to flow to next frame.

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5 hours ago, Fixx said:

Moving frames is not the idea of this exercise; you should have readymade frames and adding text just makes text jump to the next frame when text is formatted to flow to next frame.

And that's fine for the text part of the exercise.

But what about the new Picture Frame that you need added into the flow? That's what BlueSailing was expecting to happen, which is an incorrect expectation. Space is made in the text flow for a new frame, but the user has to add the Picture Frame manually.

-- Walt
Designer, Photo, and Publisher V1 and V2 at latest retail and beta releases
PC:
    Desktop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 64GB memory, AMD Ryzen 9 5900 12-Core @ 3.00 GHz, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 

    Laptop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 32GB memory, Intel Core i7-10750H @ 2.60GHz, Intel UHD Graphics Comet Lake GT2 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Laptop GPU.
iPad:  iPad Pro M1, 12.9": iPadOS 17.4.1, Apple Pencil 2, Magic Keyboard 
Mac:  2023 M2 MacBook Air 15", 16GB memory, macOS Sonoma 14.4.1

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1 hour ago, walt.farrell said:

But what about the new Picture Frame that you need added into the flow? That's what BlueSailing was expecting to happen, which is an incorrect expectation. Space is made in the text flow for a new frame, but the user has to add the Picture Frame manually.

Picture has to be added separately of course, after all you also add text by pasting it within old text. Picture can be added also by pasting it (though it is not a good habit..), but the main point is that it must be pinned to text so that it will move with text as new text snippets are added.

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Well ...

On 1/6/2020 at 2:03 AM, BlueSailing said:

...This job I'm doing is for a Bible Study class at a Baptist church here.  We have about 60 people in the class.  But if I"m fortunate enough to book the entire church, I would need to create a Directory with 1,000 or more images!  So this is really important.  And there are so many similar projects that your users could use this for, ie school yearbooks, sports and team photos, etc.

... honestly I wouldn't expect APub itself to handle and offer those dynamic data + image flows, at least not for possibly let's say 1000 images then, since it's not meant to offer the functionality of an user image database here, with sorting and rearrangements of image data etc.

Instead I would use and setup a little database with the needed user data and images as record structures for such purposes, which then can add and sort added data records accordingly and export those (via custom defined DB export generation) as a PDF report/output structure for maybe reuse in Publisher.

☛ Affinity Designer 1.10.8 ◆ Affinity Photo 1.10.8 ◆ Affinity Publisher 1.10.8 ◆ OSX El Capitan
☛ Affinity V2.3 apps ◆ MacOS Sonoma 14.2 ◆ iPad OS 17.2

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4 minutes ago, BlueSailing said:

would a spreadsheet work as well as a database? 

No, not if we are talking about several hundred (hell, even one hundred I would set up a database). It has the sorting rearranging thing solved automatically. For a 2 - 3 dozen items with a few changes every couple or three months I'd use Publisher, more than that, either items or changes, I would encourage you to learn how to use a database.

Mac Pro (Late 2013) Mac OS 12.7.4 
Affinity Designer 2.4.0 | Affinity Photo 2.4.0 | Affinity Publisher 2.4.0 | Beta versions as they appear.

I have never mastered color management, period, so I cannot help with that.

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This is beginning to sound more like a data merge kind of project, and there have been a number of feature requests about that. I don't recall if any have asked for images as well as text, but that makes sense.

-- Walt
Designer, Photo, and Publisher V1 and V2 at latest retail and beta releases
PC:
    Desktop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 64GB memory, AMD Ryzen 9 5900 12-Core @ 3.00 GHz, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 

    Laptop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 32GB memory, Intel Core i7-10750H @ 2.60GHz, Intel UHD Graphics Comet Lake GT2 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Laptop GPU.
iPad:  iPad Pro M1, 12.9": iPadOS 17.4.1, Apple Pencil 2, Magic Keyboard 
Mac:  2023 M2 MacBook Air 15", 16GB memory, macOS Sonoma 14.4.1

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As for now, rather than get into data merging, I would rather stay with this Template.  I can do a workaround and keep the groups small for now, ie 40 - 50.  I can confiigure these as Chapters.  Later on when I do much larger groups I'll look into data merging.

I've very close to getting everything to perform correctly and I'll post a step by step example shortly.

 

 

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2 minutes ago, BlueSailing said:

Later on when I do much larger groups I'll look into data merging.

Which is not (yet(?)) available in Publisher.

Seriously if you have that many people (40 - 50) involved in your Bible Study class a database would be useful for other things too. And people join then others move away it would be a real hassle to try and keep something dynamic organized in Publisher.

Horses for Courses.

Mac Pro (Late 2013) Mac OS 12.7.4 
Affinity Designer 2.4.0 | Affinity Photo 2.4.0 | Affinity Publisher 2.4.0 | Beta versions as they appear.

I have never mastered color management, period, so I cannot help with that.

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1 hour ago, BlueSailing said:

v_kyr would a spreadsheet work as well as a database? 

A spreadsheet, well maybe if it is powerful and capable enough to hold 1000 image entries too. Maybe MS Excel can handle it, otherwise a simple bare bones database like MS Access (or LibreOffice Base) should do.

Quote

And I'm not clear on how a PDF report/output could be configured to look like a page in a book and also subject to printing.

You define in the database to generate a report, say for A4 page sizes, and then which record fields (name, first name, image ... etc.) to include in which order and arrangement on a page. Then you let it generate the PDF and afterwards import that into Publisher where you want those pages to be included.

☛ Affinity Designer 1.10.8 ◆ Affinity Photo 1.10.8 ◆ Affinity Publisher 1.10.8 ◆ OSX El Capitan
☛ Affinity V2.3 apps ◆ MacOS Sonoma 14.2 ◆ iPad OS 17.2

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Bruce and v_kyr I am indeed anticipating members shuffling in and out.  But I think I'm close to having APub handle that with 50 members.  I'm trying to keep eveything as an Apub 6 1/8 by 9 1/4 document because that format lends itself to printing by Blurb, et al.  If I can keep that intact, I'll be able to bring everything together as Chapters in an APub book file.

 

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I usually work programming project related with bigger SQL based server databases (MySQL, Oracle, IBM etc.), but there are also a bunch of small and comfortable easy to use end user databases. For example MS Access, LibreOffice Base, Ninox, SQlight etc. - There are too many to name, freeware and commercial.

I believe that Ninox one is very easy to use here ...

ninox_800.jpg.e0f92f3181e5216c73c8c32c7fb4ad61.jpg

☛ Affinity Designer 1.10.8 ◆ Affinity Photo 1.10.8 ◆ Affinity Publisher 1.10.8 ◆ OSX El Capitan
☛ Affinity V2.3 apps ◆ MacOS Sonoma 14.2 ◆ iPad OS 17.2

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I've tried to make this as clear as possible for everyone by showing each action I've taken.  I think this Template from Lagarto will work.  I just need to tweak what I'm doing after I've added an image and corresponding text. The uploader scrambled the order of these screenshots! You'll need to read them in the correct order.  The image below is #3 in the sequence.  So here are the actual sequence numbers moving down:  3,4,2,1,5,6.  Ignore this post and just skip to the one below! Sorry!

3.png

4.png

2.png

1.png

5.png

6.png

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Problem SOLVED! I changed the Image Placement Policy to Embedded and everything is working fine now.  I can insert new people or delete existing people.  Even though this document was originally set up for Linked as the preferred Image Placement Policy and even though all the other images are links, it appears that embedding the new images makes a difference.  I'll be working on this first document for a few days and will post here again to let you know if it works smoothely and without glitches or crashes.  Thanks to everyone who took an interest and helped with this!

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I've finished the main part of my project now and it's working great!  You can view the file if you like.  I really appreciate the effort everyone put into this.

I've been looking through forums and searchs and it seems like the discussions have resolved that APub cannot be used to create books.  Is that true? If so, I'll start devising a workaround. Even with APub's current limitations it's still an increible tool for $50. And I know new features are forthcoming.

 

ENCOURAGERS_Alphabetical_Directory.afpub

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