Align imported photos along a path

Make a scatter brush out of your photos. It's just duplicates of the same photo, right?

I think there is also a script that can align objects along a path. I don't know if it works on photos though.

This was actually no problem until version CS5 using the plugin Scriptographer.

If you first use a rectangle to create the objects spiraling, and then use the warp with top object to distort an image to replace a rectangle that could work. You could also transform one image so that it spirals and then replace that image. It probably is scriptable.

It does seem like a very specific thing that you could hire someine who codes to help you with, or you will just have to create the effect one step at a time.

Well, if you didn't find anything, then perhaps it doesn't exist. Aside form AI being the last tool I'd think about doing this with, the challenges are quite complex. Importing so many raster images alone could bring AI to its knees and any placement more or less would have to be done manually. On top of that, if you want them to properly curve along the path you'd have to apply an envelope distort or such to each of them and tweak that to create the illusion. See the preoblem? That's likely also why a script or similar doesn't exist - I twould be difficult to "can" all tthis into code and make it work without hitches. That said, there are of course ways like applying art brushes to paths based on raster images, but there are limitations with the imgae resolution and of course unless the images are supposed to repeat over and over again you would need a ton of different brushes to create different segments. So for what it's worth - is it doable? Yes, but it's going to be a lot of work, not just invoking a magic function. And it would not necessarily be less work in photoshop, but at least there you have easier access to manipulating raster images.

Mylenium