How do I automate creating the mugshots section of a yearbook?

June 4, 2004 5:08 PM

I'll be on a team next year, putting together a year book. We want to know how we could automate the creation of the mugshots section.
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Here's the deal:

I'm sure you're all familiar with that high school yearbook section where each student has their own thumbnailed image printed alongside their name for posterity's sake. Last year the group working on the book actually dragged each image individually into the correct slot in a template. To make things worse, the file names were totally uninformative (by which I mean they were just the student's ID number which is typically used as their login for the school network).

Next year I'm going to be working on the yearbook team and I told our supervisor that I could probably find some way to automate the process to free us from having to spend hours sorting these manually. I believe we'll be using Adobe Indesign or Quark express as our publishing software. So my question is, how do we do this? Do indesign or quark have batch capabilities similar to that of photoshop that would make this a possibility? I was thinking we'd give Jostens (or whoever is processing our class photos) a system of nomenclature that would define the student's grade and name so we could get our batch operator to fill everything in for us. Something like this: "GRADENUM_FIRSTNAME_LASTNAME.jpg". Good idea? Thanks for the help.

posted by Evstar to computers & internet (10 comments total)

Unless you're using latex I don't think I can give much help. But as someone who spent quite a few hours doing exactly that manually with pagemaker (not my decision) I wish you the best of luck, however you end up doing it.
posted by fvw at 5:22 PM on June 4, 2004

Quark doesn't batch, but creating master pages is easy, and importing/styling/placing the names is too. Maybe Indesign can take a Photoshop gallery page and convert it, tho.
posted by amberglow at 5:35 PM on June 4, 2004

I have not done it myself, but If you are using a Mac your best bet would be to compile the photos and text into FileMaker Pro and build an AppleScript to take data back and forth.

If you are using a PC, you might even check out XData, which is available for both QuarkXpress and InDesign. The company makes some other very useful software which might be relevant for your purpose. Their software is available for both Mac and Windows.
posted by the biscuit man at 5:41 PM on June 4, 2004

I actually worked at Josten's for about 2 months earlier this year doing exactly what you described. I was not trained on Indesign, and Josten's doesn't use Quark (as far as I saw), but I think the process is similar as PageMaker.

We had 2 plugins that totally automated the process of placing images. The first plugin assigned each square a name based on its page number and position (ex 102-1, 102-2, etc). The images were given a standard filename when scanned, and we just had to point the plugin to the directory in which they were stored. We still had to adjust them if they didn't come in correctly, but they generally did. (This was my life for 40-48 hours a week)

Ask your Josten's representative about it, because I think the schools are given some software package similar to what we used in the plant. Though I was not briefed on that part of the operation, and I could be totally wrong about that.
posted by lovetragedy at 6:24 PM on June 4, 2004

All your problems would be solved with Corel Ventura, which has a database engine that is thoroughly righteous, but you won't use it.
posted by five fresh fish at 7:02 PM on June 4, 2004

I am working on a year book for my university (as I have for the past 2 years) there is a way to automate the placing of photos, but we had to manually alter all the filenames first so that they were in the right order.

We get all the images on CD from the Josten's photographer along with a printout with names and faculties and the ID number (also the file name) it's tedious work.

I'm not sure if I'm making sense at all.. or helping for that matter. (i had my wisdom teeth removed yesterday and have been medicated since..)
posted by normal_molly at 8:09 PM on June 4, 2004

Speaking of databases, that's another idea I had. Could we get access to do this kind of thing instead of InDesign+plugins? Would we be able to retain the visual appeal?
posted by Evstar at 8:23 PM on June 4, 2004

My boss was set on the idea to do almost the same thing, but we could not get print quality images into FileMaker Pro. It would import the picture without a problem, but they would look like crap afterwards, no matter the format. We (I) ended up building the pages manually. I wish you luck!
posted by dual_action at 8:54 PM on June 4, 2004

This could be done in no time at all using Ventura (after you'd learned to use Ventura.)
posted by five fresh fish at 10:48 AM on June 5, 2004

I'm wondering if Jostens could give you a composite hi-res eps with the shots placed and sized right--then you import it as an image into quark or indesign and just add the names.
posted by amberglow at 11:34 AM on June 5, 2004