Best way to generate 1000's of images?

[Kemble]

First of all, I do not have a full color printer (yet) and therefore do not have any wrap making software so I do not know if that's what I need or if there is another answer (which is why I'm asking here and ahead of time).


Is there a program out there that "on the fly" will take a particular design (weather it be a fill pattern or a design made by hand) and put it on multiple products at the same time and give me the images in .gif format so I can put them on the web?

For example, lets say I'm in the business of.... selling wrapped mail boxes, lets say I carry 25 different kinds/styles of mailboxes. If I have 1000's of designs and wanted to create: a carbon fiber, desert camouflage, diamond plate, American flag, etc on each of the 25 different styles of mailboxes, do I have to create each image one by one? Or is there a system/program that will allow me to pick a design, or pick a mailbox, then apply the other and generate 1000's of images on the fly?

Like I said, I don't know if wrap software does this or not, I don't have any.

Thanks

 

[HeavyHitter]

Wrap software? Photoshop gets the job done for most projects. For what you are looking to do I would make a template for each product model in photoshop. Then drop the artwork into the template and position it to fit like it should. With a simple recorded action you can make it save in different sizes for the web and as a print ready file. The recorded action would save the file without the artwork mask for printing, and then you could set it to save in 3 other sizes or what ever you require for your website and you could have the action close the file saving the psd file so you can edit the next design.

 

[weaselboogie]

With a simple recorded action .

That's what I'd suggest too! The action button is a very handy feature and can handle most mundane tasks like resizing , auto adjusting, level adjust, save and close for all in one click.

 

[HeavyHitter]

That's what I'd suggest too! The action button is a very handy feature and can handle most mundane tasks like resizing , auto adjusting, level adjust, save and close for all in one click.

I have a lot of them recorded. A friend of mine says it would take longer to find the action than to actually do the steps. LOL I have them all organized in folders. When working on certain tasks I have them grouped together to keep the searching to a min.

I also have a number of Droplets on the desktop. Just drop an image on the Droplet and boom... Photoshop takes care of the rest.

Dan

 

[Fred Weiss]

At my clipart sites, we have nearly 20,000 images displayed. Each of them was processed by an Action in Photoshop. What would have been otherwise measured in man months had we done them manually took only a couple of days.

 

[HeavyHitter]

At my clipart sites, we have nearly 20,000 images displayed. Each of them was processed by an Action in Photoshop. What would have been otherwise measured in man months had we done them manually took only a couple of days.

How many times did you fall asleep hitting the action 20,000 times? :Big Laugh LOL man that is a lot of images. You are right there is no way I would start an operation like that without recording an action for it.

 

[J Hill Designs]

once you create the action, you can use it as a batch-type function in photoshop and it will do it automatically to selected files...

 

[Fred Weiss]

How many times did you fall asleep hitting the action 20,000 times? :Big Laugh LOL man that is a lot of images. You are right there is no way I would start an operation like that without recording an action for it.

once you create the action, you can use it as a batch-type function in photoshop and it will do it automatically to selected files...

I used the automated batch feature where it would work but with larger files like my seamless textures, there were memory issues. Mostly I would just drag and drop 10 to 20 files at a time into Photoshop and then just hit the function key assigned to the particular action repeatedly ... which includes a Save As and a Close command.

Another issue is the difference in processing between a tall image and a wide image. To achieve uniformity, two different actions were created. So, for example, I would hit F4 for a wide image and F5 for a tall image. Still pretty quick.

It was actually no big deal doing it that way and I would guesstimate the average productivity was 150 to 200 images processed per hour.

 

[HeavyHitter]

once you create the action, you can use it as a batch-type function in photoshop and it will do it automatically to selected files...

yeah like I mentioned above I create a droplet and save it to the desk top. I can drag 50 images on to the droplet and let photoshop do its thing. Super easy.

Dan

 

[Kemble]

hrmmm, gonna look up that "recorded action" that you mention. Never heard of it. Sounds like I'm going to kick myself for not knowing about it sooner...