Here's a challenging one for you WorkFlow experts out there!

[creativevision]

Have found users on this forum to be incredibly well versed .. so here's a question that might be a bit challenging .... 

Can anyone point us in the best direction for using Affinity PHOTO (or not as the case may be - perhaps there is a very simple online solution that we don't know!) for achieving the following:

1. We start with a simple small image sized 480 x 400px, let's call it TEMPLATE_IMAGE

2. We have a list of around 150 different names in a spreadsheet, let's call them Name1 to Name150

3. We want to create and export multiple versions of Template_Image as JPGs named Name1.jpg, Name2.jpg ... and so on up to Name150.jpg each of which is exactly the same EXCEPT that across the bottom of the image is overlaid the specific Name in a nice large clear Arial text. 

Think of it as 150 delegates who will all be given the same badge except for their own individual name being emblazoned across the bottom. The attached two examples should help clarify if not clear ... imagine 150 of these with 150 different names ...

... we want to automate the creation process!

 

[creativevision]

Ps. Another way to consider this 'problem' is imagine we had a photo of a standard Fish & Chips shop. And we wanted to automate the creation of lots of versions of that exact same image but with the name of the shop above the door changing from one photo to the next ... in accordance with a list of typed names (and displayed in whatever style we wish ... the style could remain the same between pictures).

So we may end up with 100 photos, all the same except that the name above the door says "John's Fish & Chips" on one in the image, "Fishy Fish" on another, "Cods Galore" on another ... and so on ... and all those names would have been inserted and saved as a separate JPG by reference to a spreadsheet list (or something similar)

[Ray S.]

I'am not an workflow expert of any kind but I think this can be done with the brandnew "Data-Merge-Manager" in the actual 1.9-beta-version of Publisher. 

[creativevision]

4 minutes ago, Ray S. said:

I'am not an workflow expert of any kind but I think this can be done with the brandnew "Data-Merge-Manager" in the actual 1.9-beta-version of Publisher. 

Thanks Ray ... my mistake, as such a novice user of the product I even forgot to mention that we need the solution for use in our copy of Affinity Photo (which is the only licence we currently have). Have edited the original post to add PHOTO now!

[wonderings]

2 minutes ago, Ray S. said:

I'am not an workflow expert of any kind but I think this can be done with the brandnew "Data-Merge-Manager" in the actual 1.9-beta-version of Publisher. 

+1 this is one of the things you want data merge for. For this you will be wanting Publisher which as Ray has said has data merge in the latest beta. Not sure why you would want to do this in Photo as it is a photo app, not a page layout app. It would also be recommended to supply PDF's for print and not jpegs, personally I hate receiving those files especially if you want to print a bunch of names, having individual jpegs makes this way more work then it needs to be. I did a quick example in Indesign as I know how that works, you can achieve the same thing in the lates Publisher beta.

data merge example.pdf

[Joachim_L]

Install the trial version of APublisher, get your work done within 10 days, sell your work for 50 54,99 euros, buy a copy of APublisher and now earn even more money.

 

[creativevision]

Ah thank you all - didn't know there was a 10 day trial of AP ... and hence was trying to achieve it with whatever we already have

Sounds like pretty good value at €50 ... was assuming all these publisher type softwares were many hundreds!

Will try the various suggestions, great news that it sounds like something that's not too difficult to achieve!

[wonderings]

Just now, creativevision said:

Ah thank you all - didn't know there was a 10 day trial of AP ... and hence was trying to achieve it with whatever we already have

Sounds like pretty good value at €50 ... was assuming all these publisher type softwares were many hundreds!

Will try the various suggestions, great news that it sounds like something that's not too difficult to achieve!

It is really simple once you understand how it works. There are a few things to watch for, like longer names fitting in the text box you have set. I am assuming Publisher gives you a warning when these occur. Publisher, like the rest of the Affinity apps are very cheap and a great value for the money, it is definitely worth the money and you should easily be able to recoup that with one job as well as be able to save yourself time that you would be putting into dealing with 150 unique jpegs rather then 1 - 150 page PDF that a printed can print/impose from very easily.

[creativevision]

1 minute ago, wonderings said:

It is really simple once you understand how it works. There are a few things to watch for, like longer names fitting in the text box you have set. I am assuming Publisher gives you a warning when these occur. Publisher, like the rest of the Affinity apps are very cheap and a great value for the money, it is definitely worth the money and you should easily be able to recoup that with one job as well as be able to save yourself time that you would be putting into dealing with 150 unique jpegs rather then 1 - 150 page PDF that a printed can print/impose from very easily.

Thanks - we do actually need 150 JPGs as the end use for this case is to upload them into separate records for an online system that requires JPGs not PDFs

[Joachim_L]

Ooops. Mistake. 1.9.0x is still to be released, so the trial won't help you. Sorry.

[creativevision]

Just now, Joachim_L said:

Ooops. Mistake. 1.9.0x is still to be released, so the trial won't help you. Sorry.

Haha, yes was just trying to find the aforementioned trial but the closest I got was a message saying that I need to enter my existing Publisher key!

 

[walt.farrell]

13 minutes ago, creativevision said:

Haha, yes was just trying to find the aforementioned trial but the closest I got was a message saying that I need to enter my existing Publisher key!

 

You can't use the Beta unless you own the retail version. And the Trial version is only for 1.8, not for the 1.9 beta.

[wonderings]

16 minutes ago, creativevision said:

Thanks - we do actually need 150 JPGs as the end use for this case is to upload them into separate records for an online system that requires JPGs not PDFs

Weird, seems a bit backwards to me but whatever works! 

[Old Bruce]

If you have the trial of Publisher then make a new document in Pixels of the size of the final image. Make it a single page spread. On the master page put the jpeg you want then put a text frame the width of the page and the height you want the name to be, it can be taller.

What I have done is set up a Text Style for Right hand Justification with white colour and a Black stroke. It starts each paragraph on a new page.

I have a Text frame set to align the text to the bottom with an offset of 15 pixels on all sides.

Forget the spreadsheet, generate a text file with each name on a new line (therefore they are all on a separate paragraph).

Place this text file on page one in the text frame, select all the text (on Mac it is Command + A, not certain but it may be Control + A on Windows) and apply the Text paragraph Style to all of the text. You should be looking at one name on one page. Shift Click on the little red triangle in the bottom right of the Text frame. This will automatically generate the pages based on the Master page with the picture and text frame.

Now export as JPEGs and make sure you have all pages chosen.

This took far longer to write than to actually do it.

For Names on a Picture.zip

 

[creativevision]

54 minutes ago, Old Bruce said:

If you have the trial of Publisher then make a new document in Pixels of the size of the final image. Make it a single page spread. On the master page put the jpeg you want then put a text frame the width of the page and the height you want the name to be, it can be taller.

What I have done is set up a Text Style for Right hand Justification with white colour and a Black stroke. It starts each paragraph on a new page.

I have a Text frame set to align the text to the bottom with an offset of 15 pixels on all sides.

Forget the spreadsheet, generate a text file with each name on a new line (therefore they are all on a separate paragraph).

Place this text file on page one in the text frame, select all the text (on Mac it is Command + A, not certain but it may be Control + A on Windows) and apply the Text paragraph Style to all of the text. You should be looking at one name on one page. Shift Click on the little red triangle in the bottom right of the Text frame. This will automatically generate the pages based on the Master page with the picture and text frame.

Now export as JPEGs and make sure you have all pages chosen.

This took far longer to write than to actually do it.

For Names on a Picture.zip 1.01 MB · 1 download

 

Dear Old Bruce - you're a star, thank you!

All your instructions sound very easy and I'm sure they are. I unzipped your kindly attached file, opened Test for flowing.afpub and also replaced the dummy data in the Names.txt file with my own. Just a newbie question remains (and pardon my ignorance as have never used Publisher) ... how do I follow your instruction to "Place this text file on page one in the text frame"? (I'm on a Mac by the way)

[David in Яuislip]

2 hours ago, creativevision said:

Can anyone point us in the best direction for using Affinity PHOTO

Well I can point you in a direction, whether it's best depends upon your sense of humour 🙂

What I have done is use a Frame text thing that is populated with a simple text file. You now need to move this up for each image, a cheeky macro can help here

150 images shouldn't take that long, I wouldn't suggest it for 15 thousand though

Anyway, hat tip to @Old Bruce, I am going to study that

ManualWatermarkNoise.afphoto ManWat.afmacro

[creativevision]

UPDATE: Old Bruce is not only an angel for helping so kindly (he messaged me directly with step by step instructions for a newbie like me), he's clearly also highly able at this because it worked an absolute treat using just the basic Trial version of Publisher (ie not 1.9 Beta)

Thank you Old Bruce - I said at the outset of this post that users on this forum were incredibly well versed ... you've surpassed all exceptions!! Thanks again! 

[v_kyr]

That's usually pretty trivial to do with the right tools on hand! -  As an example creating a little custom Java prog to do that took about 10 minutes at all ...

 

[Andy05]

1 hour ago, v_kyr said:

As an example creating a little custom Java prog to do that took about 10 minutes at all ...

Hm. You forgot counting the time for learning Java. Not everyone working with design apps is also capable of programming (in whatever language needed for solving the problem).

[AlainP]

Publisher is really "the" solution for this. But another alternative if you have to use Photo only is to create a text layer for each name you need over the background image, you turn off all of them all and turn on only the one you want to print and then go to the next one. You could print to pdf and then assemble all the pages in one document (many free apps can do that) and then send it to your printer.

 

[v_kyr]

8 hours ago, Andy05 said:

Hm. You forgot counting the time for learning Java. Not everyone working with design apps is also capable of programming (in whatever language needed for solving the problem).

There are many many other tools where you don't need really to program at all, one can use tools like ImageMagick etc. Or you use what some OS offer here for scripting and automating (MacOS Automator etc.). - Further other image manipulation software like Gimp for example uses more easy scripting for such things. There are also apps which can bulk place copyrights and signs on images etc. - In any case, it is basically sad that you cannot do something like that directly within Affinity Photo and it's default capabilities.