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tomt75016605
tomt75016605
Participant
October 27, 2023
Question

How to automatically distribute images onto multiple A4 pages for printing

  • October 27, 2023
  • 1 reply
  • 1263 views

Hi there!

 

I'm looking to print my own playing cards for a game that I've created. I intend to print them on A4 with a third party company and cut them out myself.

 

They've all been designed and exported in their correct sizes, but there's over 400 of them. Is there a way that I can select them all and distribute them evenly over as many A4 pages as is required automatically?

 

Thanks in advance for any assistance!

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    1 reply

    Stephen Marsh
    Community Expert
    Stephen MarshCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    October 27, 2023

    One option is to use a collage template script from the late JJMack:

     

    https://github.com/MarshySwamp/JJMack-Archive

     

    BatchMultiImageCollage.jsx - Used to Automatically Batch Populate Any Photo Collage template with images in a source image folder.

    The Four Rules:

    1. Size the photo collage templates for the print size you want - width, height and print PPI resolution.
    2. Photo collage templates must have a Photoshop background layer. The contents of this layer can be anything.
    3. Photo collage templates must have alpha channels named "Image 1", "Image 2", ... "Image n". These map your images Location Position, Shape and size (i.e. a black channel with a white "window" in the size/position for each image).
    4. Photo collage templates layers above the background layers must provide transparent areas to let the images that will be placed below them show through.

     

    tomt75016605
    tomt75016605Author
    Participant
    November 4, 2023

    Thanks for this Stephen. I had a go at this.

     

    In the end though I figured that by the time I'd learned to use this properly I could have dragged and dropped all of the images manually. I created my own guidelines and snapped the images to them. 

     

    I'm sure this method will be useful in future though so I'll keep your advice in mind.

     

    thank you!

    Stephen Marsh
    Community Expert
    Stephen MarshCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    November 4, 2023

    Like most things in life, it's about trade-offs... If you only need to do this once, then setting up a template file wouldn't be worth the effort if it took longer than doing it manually.

     

    If you need to do this regularly or if the template setup was faster, then the time spent setting up the template is only performed once, then the automation via the template is worth the effort.

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