simple script request, would fix contact sheet prob

General Discussion of Scripting for Adobe Bridge

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eashonk

simple script request, would fix contact sheet prob

Post by eashonk »

I really need a simple script made. I ran into the problem of bridge's output option not being able to output folders with multiple sub-folders. In my circumstance I need contact sheets of files which are in sub-folders. (For instance: Sports/baseball/base1.jpg; sports/basketball/bask1.jpg) I need a catalog of the contents of each sub-folder inside the "Sports" folder. To do this on the amount of files I have would take forever, there are about 300 of them, each containing upwards of 400 pics each.

To get around this problem I need a simple script which will do the following:

In bridge you would select a folder (Sports). You would run the script. The script would select the subfolders one at a time (Sports/baseball). Then, the script would select all the contents of this folder and output them as a pdf or web gallery. A saved template could be used to automate the settings of the output window. The script would output this pdf in the same folder, named with the same name as the folder which is selected. So the catalog for "Sports/baseball" would be named "baseball.pdf" and would be located in "Sports/baseball/baseball.pdf". The script would do this for all sub-folders in the "Sports" folder.

I don't know anything about scripting at all, so I would need instructions of how to make it work, where to run it from, but I am a graphic artist and am very familiar with bridge, so I should get it very easily. I believe this would fix my issue saving many hours of repetitive work. Any help in this matter would be greatly appreciated, I don't know how much work is involved but I think it would be fairly straightforward. And of course, you could be the author of a very useful and needed script that would solve a lot of people's issues with the bridge output menu.
Paul MR

simple script request, would fix contact sheet prob

Post by Paul MR »

Sorry but the output panel in Bridge is not scriptable.
You could have a look at Xbytor's CSX script, this might be of use...
http://ps-scripts.sourceforge.net/Conta ... X/csx.html ... X/csx.html
eashonk

simple script request, would fix contact sheet prob

Post by eashonk »

well, that does work, unfortunately not as well as what a true pdf document does. the file sizes and resolution are not that great, but I can deal with it. do you know of a program that will combine all of these individual pdf files into a multipage pdf file? I know I could do this in acrobat pro, but I don't have it installed on this machine.
xbytor

simple script request, would fix contact sheet prob

Post by xbytor »

Does increasing the resolution improve the result?
eashonk

simple script request, would fix contact sheet prob

Post by eashonk »

yes, increasing the resolution would make the quality better, but it also increases the file size. that is the advantage of the output module in bridge, it uses vector data to create the pdfs which makes them resolution independent. the result is crisp images with smaller file sizes. I guess I never mentioned that these were vector eps files I was dealing with, but that is the disadvantage of using photoshop for this method, it places all the eps files and converts them to bmp images.
xbytor

simple script request, would fix contact sheet prob

Post by xbytor »

The only thing I can think of that might help is to check 'embedSmartObjects' on the Advanced panel.
That way CSX doesn't rasterize the thumbnails.
eashonk

simple script request, would fix contact sheet prob

Post by eashonk »

well, tried checking the "include smart objects" box, and unchecked the "flatten image" box, ran it with no noticeable difference. I don't understand what these boxes are doing, I could see no difference in the result. I checked the box "keep file open" so I could inspect it, and ps did keep the layers and smart objects intact. I imported the resulting test files into a vector program (corel x4) and found no vector data, except for the file names, which still contained fonts which was cool, but no vector data for the files themselves. The resulting test files were also the exact same size as before (about 500-600k).

I am thinking the adobe people made this difficult so they could sell their "Light Room" program. As I recall PS used to be able to do this the way I want it done. This is the only rational reason I can think of to inhibit such a useful feature.
xbytor

simple script request, would fix contact sheet prob

Post by xbytor »

I don't work with eps files all that much so the Smart Object trick was the only thing I could think of.

If you can show me an example of how to embed several eps files into a single PS doc, transform them
as needed for placement in a contact sheet and save them as a PDF file with the vector data
retained, I can add this to CSX. We would have a 'handleAsVectorData' button on the Advanced panel
or something.
larsen67

simple script request, would fix contact sheet prob

Post by larsen67 »

X, is this possible with PS and smart objects? I would have thought to retain the vector graphics you would need to us ID or AI…? It's a long while since I last used .eps it's always been a PITA format to deal with…
xbytor

simple script request, would fix contact sheet prob

Post by xbytor »

It's a long while since I last used .eps it's always been a PITA format to deal with…

Same here. If somebody can show me how to do it in PS, that would be great.