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[Lorraine]

Hey,

On a graphics forum I'm on, someone needs to generate a few hundred images based on some text. Specifically, she needs to make a bunch of images of dates for the last few centuries. (Don't know why, sorry.)

Anyone know of a desktop program that will do the job? So far, I've found ImageMagick: http://www.imagemagick.org/script/index.php.

Thanks!

L

[BobWilliams [CT]]

ImageMagick will work just fine, and is free. It may be a bit complex for many folks, though. Don't forget, however, that you can also use just about any graphics program for this. Just type the text how you want it to appear, and save it out as a JPEG, GIF, or PNG image as appropriate. You can even use MS Word's Copy as Picture command, though you have a lot less control, then. If you want to automate the process a bit, you could write up some VBScript to drive an Office app, or, if on a Mac, some AppleScript to drive any drawing program. But then, we're back to a bit more complexity, so we may also be back to ImageMagick....

I would bet that there are little single-purpose utilities out there for doing this sort of thing, but unfortunately, I'm not familiar with any.

BTW, I don't know exactly what's being generated, but you most likely don't need to generate hundreds of images if you just generate and then combine parts. For example, you might generate the ten digits, the separator character(s), and the month names, for a total of about 23 images. Without the month names, you're down to just 11 images. If this will work in this particular situation, it'll save a lot of time.

[Lorraine]

Thanks, Bob!

All I know is she's making Flash cards. Since she's making about 600 (!?!), it isn't something to tackle without some kind of automation to hand. I asked her if they're physical cards (because, if so, a Word mailing label template might be a better way to go), but don't have an answer yet.

Yes, it seems like there ought to be something "off the shelf," but it also seems like a process with a limited demand.

More on this story as it develops!

[BobWilliams [CT]]

If you don't find a good solution on your own, definitely go ahead and post any further details you get. We might be able to apply a bit of collective think to come up with some decent ideas for you to try out.

[Lorraine]

I figured out a way to do it using Excel, Fireworks, and batch files (for renaming). It means exporting and renaming 100 images almost 2200 times.

I've linked to this thread so she may come by and see if anyone can help her out more then my simple link to ImageMagick and a short page on how to set up the command line to produce an image from text http://www.bl.com/moshe/text/quiddities/imagefromtext.html

Thanks!

[BobWilliams [CT]]

Glad you got it .

[m2007jones]

Here is another program and I was wondering do anyone know how to make a login page with mail payment scripts.

http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux/core/updates/2/

[Lorraine]

Here is another program and I was wondering do anyone know how to make a login page with mail payment scripts.

http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux/core/updates/2/

What?!? Updating Redhat? How is that even related?


Er...as for my original question. A Fireworks guru wrote an extension (Fireworks can be augmented with JavaScript) that would do the job. I thought that was pretty cool of him. 

[skemcin]

Depending on the exact requirements - ColdFusion's <cfimage> is capable of doing this on the fly.

[Lorraine]

Thanks, but the Fireworks solution worked great. Turns out it was more like 180,000 images. With the Fireworks extension, she could set up the formatting of the image the way she wanted (fonts, colors, anti-aliasing, export format and parameters, etc), then produce the text to make images of and start the code running. Worked like a charm.

I don't know why someone suddenly decided to reply to a two-month old thread with something that wasn't relevant at all.    Oh well!