User Input When Making Actions

[Lethal.Weapon]

Hey all, whats up? I have a question for all of you. I want to create an action that will take individual pictures and put them on a template, and then ask for user input as to the name, year, etc. How do I get a user input box? If i can't get a user input box, are there any alternatives? I'm hoping to do this in Photoshop.

Thanks for all the help,

Lethal

[sPECtre]

You need to click on the "display dialog" box, on the left side of corresponding step of the action (the three dots in a tiny window icon)

If you are into actions, I recommend wholeheartedly this mega tutorial: http://www.atncentral.com/tutorials.htm it will tell you EVERYTHING about actions...

[dannyraphael]

But...

"I want to create an action that will take individual pictures and put them on a template, and then ask for user input as to the name, year, etc."

- - - - -

Actions aren't this smart. You can "display" information by using a STOP command in an action, but not ask for user input.

That would require scripting, available as a download for PS7 or built into PS CS, plus a script editing application. If you're into Visual Basic, JavaScript or AppleScript (I'm not), you could program such functionality and invoke the script through Photoshop.

~Danny~

[lokki]

Thanks dannyraphael - good clarification.

Another option is to simply use a catalogue program like ACDSee or any of a number of other image storage systems.

http://acdsystems.com

[dannyraphael]

Good call, looki.

I'm totally ignorant of these types of programs. Does ACDSee have the ability to accomodate custom placement and custom text for individual images, e.g., "...name, year, etc."? If so, that would be the ticket, albeit for a modest additional expense.

www.Irfanview.com (for Irfanview) might work, too. It's free, but I've never used it.

~Danny~

[lokki]

I don't think you can overlay that info directly in ACDSee, but you can enter it as metadata, and I think there's a plugin for PS somewhere that takes the data and makes the overlay. I'm also pretty sure you can print the photos with titles from the data, so you might be able to 'print to file' and get the same results, though this is a dicey proposition (duplicates and incorrect data formatting may be a problem).

ACDSee is more of an organization/archiving/database tool...

[Klatu Baradda Nekto]

MOD: Thread moved to proper forum