Batch Merge Images?

[Ray J]

I have 500 shirt mockups with a transparent background, and I have 1 background that I want to add to all of these 500 mockups. Is there a way to batch automate this rather than having to do this manually 500 times?

[Ldina]

@Ray J I'd try creating a Macro using your first tee shirt image, then saving the macro. Prior to creating the Macro, I'd probably edit my background image so its pixel dimensions and orientation are identical to your tee shirt image. In the macro, you'll want to place your common background image below your tee shirt image. I'd probably make sure the tee shirt image and the background are in the same folder to avoid possible problems when running a batch job (i..e., file not found, etc).

Once the Macro is complete, save it to your Library, then try running a Batch process and use your saved Macro in the Batch. Select your desired export format and size from the Batch process window.

I think this ought to work, but I haven't tried the entire process myself. 

EDIT: I've assumed above that ALL your tee shirt mockups are the exact same pixel dimensions and orientations, same color space, etc. If not, your macro will probably need to address these issues and standardize your tee shirt files (on the fly), so your placed background image will fill the frame in the same manner in each tee shirt image. I hope that made sense. 

[lacerto]

Obsolete.

[Ray J]

12 hours ago, Ldina said:

@Ray J I'd try creating a Macro using your first tee shirt image, then saving the macro. Prior to creating the Macro, I'd probably edit my background image so its pixel dimensions and orientation are identical to your tee shirt image. In the macro, you'll want to place your common background image below your tee shirt image. I'd probably make sure the tee shirt image and the background are in the same folder to avoid possible problems when running a batch job (i..e., file not found, etc).

Once the Macro is complete, save it to your Library, then try running a Batch process and use your saved Macro in the Batch. Select your desired export format and size from the Batch process window.

I think this ought to work, but I haven't tried the entire process myself. 

EDIT: I've assumed above that ALL your tee shirt mockups are the exact same pixel dimensions and orientations, same color space, etc. If not, your macro will probably need to address these issues and standardize your tee shirt files (on the fly), so your placed background image will fill the frame in the same manner in each tee shirt image. I hope that made sense. 

Thanks, this worked like a charm! 

[Ldina]

@Ray J You're welcome. Glad it did the job! 😃

[Ldina]

On 8/9/2024 at 12:43 PM, lacerto said:

If you have Affinity Publisher, I would try Data Merge by copy pasting the t-shirt file paths into an Excel or Numbers sheet (it can be done in one go both on Windows and macOS), and them apply the image paths onto a Picture Frame control on top of the background image. After merging into separate pages, you should be able to export at desired size to separate raster images (e.g. JPG or PNG). As a bonus, you can apply effects like Outer Shadow FX on merged images. 

@lacerto Hi Lacerto. I know Ray J handled his issue with a macro, but your solution intrigued me. Honestly, I admit I am clueless about how one would paste a t-shirt file path into Excel or Numbers and use that to generate a bunch of images with Data Merge with Publisher. If you have the time, and interest, I'd like to know more about this process (remember, for someone who is essentially clueless about this! I have Numbers and would use that.) 

[lacerto]

Obsolete.

[Ldina]

@lacerto Very cool. Thank you for the great video, and also for taking the time to put this together for me. I've never done a Data Merge in Publisher, nor did it occur to me that you could actually data merge images! I figured it was probably designed for text, names, dates, addresses and other textual data, for form letters, mailing labels, etc. I will give it a try myself later today. 

Thanks again...excellent and well-informed, as usual!! 😃

[Ldina]

@lacerto I played around with Data Merge in Publisher and was able to generate a series of pages with images successfully. One thing, at least on my Mac, Data Merge doesn't recognize my Numbers file format (it was grayed out), so I exported from Numbers to Excel file format, which it then recognized and loaded. I'll need to play a bit more to get more comfortable with the whole process.

One thing I did NOT do, (which you did), was to format the first Data Merged image (Fit to Min, drop shadow FX, etc), before generating the rest of the images. I still have some things to learn here. At least I know it can be done, and have the basics. I appreciate it.

[lacerto]

Obsolete.

[Ldina]

@lacerto Thanks. I quickly read over some of the Publisher Help files after struggling with Data Merging from Numbers and saw that they want CSV, TSV or XLSX file format. I can export to XLSX from Numbers so that works fine.

I'm not all that great with Numbers (nor a big fan, but I no longer have Excel). When copying and pasting multiple, selected filename paths from Finder, it only pasted the first item from the clipboard into Numbers. I checked the clipboard and all the selected filenames and paths are there, so it's some sort of limitation in Numbers, or probably my lack of familiarity with the program. It's probably user error on my part, but I've never found Numbers to be as intuitive, powerful or flexible as Excel. I wanted to test out the Data Merge feature and made it work, with your assistance. I probably won't need to use very often in my work, but it's very cool and I'm glad to see it as one of Publisher's features. Now I have another alternative to process batch images, so thanks for the tutorial!