Preserved Topic: automating, reading *.txt or something

Hi,
I have to do round about 400 Images every 3 Weeks like the ones below.
The Product-Pictures are given and I have to add the 2 prices and the strikethrough.
I#ve been looking for a good solution for a long time but the best I found was to automate this task in PS so far, that I only have to type the 2 prices manually for each picture. I#ve done it also in Image Magick, but the result sucks.
So I was wondering, if it is possible to get the name of the next image to be worked over and the 2 prices that have to be put in it out of a textfile or something like that.
Is there any possibility for PS to do that?
https://shop.avon.de/avonshop/Pic/79814-t_s.jpg
https://shop.avon.de/avonshop/Pic/79814_s.jpg

unlikely, sick bird... although a custom plugin *might* be able to do it.
I've toyed with COM automating Photoshop, but without much success (you can call actions. That's about it.)
You could either:
-Find a macro recorder, and record your commands to photosh,p feed the recorder from the txt
-try gimp, which should be more scriptable (it's free, too), although I haven't played with it yet. Supposedly runs a tad bit unstable on windows, but probably well enough for this kind of thing.

so long,

Tyberius Prime

Why not do the whole thing with PHP (or ASP) and DHTML.

The images don't need to be altered, the prices can be in transparent divs at a higher z-factor than the pictures (so they are "above" the picture level) and then the interpretation of the text file or database (to determine which pikkie gets which price) can be done in ASP at the point of building the page ... that's the whole idea of server-side programming ... to make your pages data driven rather than static ... It would seem the rest of the site is pretty much database-driven ...

I only know PHP and Perl, so I can't help with the ASP implementation.


Bug-free software only exisits in two places
A programmer's mind and a salesman's lips

yes i agree with TB oyu're best solution would be the GIMP. Other than being more scriptable tho the only purpose of the gimp is for linux people who cant run photoshop. So i woldn't use it too much.

thanks a lot,
trib, you are right, that most of the site is database-driven, but my customer won't agree to use dhtml, they even didn't want me to use frames to build this site.
Does the GIMP produce acceptable results? it was damn frustrating to set up Image-Magick to get such a crippled output as I got...

krankervogel

I'm pretty sure the gimp can turn up any result you'll like... wait, I'll give it a quick try...

ok, here's an example output:


And in the scripts that came with it there's one called 'ascii to image' (or similary), that almost does what you want... it reads a textfile and builts one image from it... from there, it would probably be trivial to have it parse the file, open the image specified, put the text you want on it, and save it as whatever you wish.

(Note: Gimp must have the most awefull interface I've seen in a looooong time. Free or not, I would never ever use something like that every day.)

If you can't get it to work yourself, contact me, or the asylum, and I'm sure we'll work something out....

Gotta run, 'freshman'-party tonight at the uni...,
Tyberius Prime

[This message has been edited by Tyberius Prime (edited 04-25-2003).]