Repetitive Image Drop - Photobook

[TimmSL]

Hello

I create regularily a photobook with > 300 Pictures in Affinity Publisher. I arrange these photos -- sometimes up to 10 pictures per page -- on the pages of that photobook. Whenever I paste these images from another tool (Luminar -- unfortunately still waiting for a Lightroom competitor / killer from Serif) the pictures will be added to my page in different scales based on their resolution, oftenly they are much to big to fit into the page. 

Is there any way to automatically with in the drop process scale them down to a size that fits into the page directly without touching every picture separately. In my workflow I drag them over, mark all of them and scale them down manually. Afterwards I bring them into frames to be able to adapt the image focus, scale and fit into my arrangement, the grid, etc...

Many thanks for any ideas, hints etc..

[walt.farrell]

Welcome to the Serif Affinity forums.

Are you using Picture Frames?

[TimmSL]

Hello Walt, thanks for your response!

Yes, after the paste of the images I convert those images into picture Frames: "Layer -> convert to picture frame". To fasten up this step I use an individual short-cut to do it via keyboard. But also those picture frames need to be sized. My Problem is, these images / frames might be much bigger than my page and hide the probably given content of the page too much, too. My intention is to find a way (script, command) to convert these images / frames automatically (in one stroke, best with the picture frame convertion).

To be honest, I'm not sure if Publisher does have such scription / recording functionality.

Thx Timm

[walt.farrell]

10 minutes ago, TimmSL said:

Yes, after the paste of the images I convert those images into picture Frames: "Layer -> convert to picture frame".

You should try making your Picture Frames first, and adding the images into them.

[TimmSL]

Well, yes, that's the intention, but my photobook does not have any predefined frames, layout pages, etc.., I want to be flexible and do a mass-load of pictures I selected and then start arranging the pictures. Having the frames first seems to be too much effort, because I have to drag every single image exclusively into the application / document.

It would be fine to mark all dragged images at once and then start a command / execute a command.

[walt.farrell]

If you're doing a mass-load of unframed pictures, you have no way to control their size. That's part of what Picture Frames are intended to do.

You can (in V2):

1. Prepare a document page with several Picture Frames on it, then
2. Click the Place Tool and select a set of Photos, then
3. In the Place panel, select all the images that were loaded, then
4. Click once on an empty Picture Frame.

At that point, Publisher will fill all the empty Picture Frames on that page, then create additional duplicate pages as needed until all the images have been placed into frames.

Help: https://affinity.help/publisher2/en-US.lproj/pages/Media/placeImagesAutoflow.html

[carl123]

4 hours ago, TimmSL said:

Is there any way to automatically with in the drop process scale them down to a size that fits into the page directly without touching every picture separately

You can use File > Place to select all the images at once then on the canvas Click & drag each image to place them on the canvas

At this stage you only need to click & drag each image to, say, a thumbnail size just to get them on the page, you can resize them later when you do your layout

[TimmSL]

Yes, this is the new functionality, works fine and sounds great for a manageable number of images . But you need to know where the dedicated images are located / how named (I have the original cam naming) and stored in a pre-seleted way -- with 300 images it is not working in an appropriate way (just tried):

a.) It loads very long into the cache

b.) You have the placement tab with the pictures -- but once you leave it (select another tool), it gets lost again and you have to start over...

c.) The images are sorted somehow (can't say) -- but I prefer a date sorted approach.

Therefore I fear I need to stay with my Luminar workflow.