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@Ron Canon Sorry to hear that the company went bankrupt! That truly stinks... hopefully, you got your money back. $6,000 is a lot of coin!
Maybe look at wedding photography companies, as many would or could use that style. I know I have used companies such as Costco and Shutterfly. You just have to upload the images yourself; This could mean you can customized the layout of the photos on the page too... so, you could have 3 images or 4 images versus just one. And it is cost effect... unless you are printing mass qualities... granted, there probably are bigger savings for more?!
If there is an efficient way to take the individual images from the unflattened PSDs and save each one separately I would love to know how it is done. Also many of the 200+ spreads have 8 images on each one so this is a very big undertaking. But I do appreciate your suggestion. Thank you again.
By @Ron Canon
It would depend on the layer structure. If you can post reduced-resolution copies of the PSD files that would help, you can redact people's faces etc. A custom script could then be written if one of the following generic scripts didn't do the job.
There are various scripted options for saving layers to files:
Photoshop has a "Layers to Files" script and you can also select the the required layers in the layers panel and right click and select "Export As".
There are various 3rd party options for saving layers to files:
https://github.com/antipalindrome/Photoshop-Export-Layers-to-Files-Fast
https://github.com/Paul-Riggott/PS-Scripts/blob/master/Layer%20Saver.jsx
https://github.com/Paul-Riggott/PS-Scripts/blob/master/Layer%20Saver%20Plus.jsx
These are not designed for batching, so I'm not sure if they can be used for batches, but this one is designed for batching:
https://www.marspremedia.com/software/photoshop/save-layers
This is something that’s been doable before AI existed. One way is shown in the demo below. If you have to process 220 of these, you might be able to record the steps below as an Action or write it as a script, and then apply that as a batch job on the 220 images.
The basic idea behind the steps below is: Select the magenta color and delete those pixels, leaving transparency; this will make it easy to apply an adjustable Stroke layer style around the images that’s set to white and a stroke width you choose. Also, create a new solid background color, set it to black, and stack it behind the stroked image layer.
1. Choose the command Select > Color Range.
2. With the Select menu set to Sampled Colors, click the color in the image that you want to select, in this case magenta. (I clicked the magenta in the document window, but you can also click in the Color Range dialog box preview.) My Fuzziness value of 200 does not have to be that high for this example, it can probably be quite low. I simply forgot to lower it.
3. Click OK. The color (or color range) you sampled becomes a selection.
4. In the Layers panel, unlock the layer. This could have been done before entering Color Range. This is necessary to allow complete removable of the background (to transparency).
5. Press the Delete key, or choose Edit > Clear. The magenta background is now removed, and the image background is now transparent (not white).
6. Click the Deselect button in the Contextual Task Bar (or choose Select > Deselect).
7. Create a new Solid Color Fill layer. I did it by clicking the button at the bottom of the Layers panel that creates a new fill or adjustment layer, but you can also choose the command Layer > New Fill Layer > Solid Color.
8. Set the solid fill layer color to black or any other color you want.
9. In the Layers panel, drag the solid fill layer behind the image layer.
10. Select the image layer and apply a stroke effect. I did this by clicking the “fx” button at the bottom of the Layers panel, but you can also choose the command Layer > Layer Style > Stroke. This is the entire reason for separating the images onto their own layer earlier with a transparent background: The Stroke layer style draws along the edges of non-transparent regions.
11. Export a copy in whatever format the album company needs. (Keeping the layered originals is a good idea if you think you might want to change the design again later.)
By applying the new background color as a solid fill layer and the new stroke as a layer style, you can edit either one at any time. If you had done this using pixels (e.g. the Paint Bucket), the change would be permanent and much more difficult to change later if needed.
It looks like I should have inspected the results more closely. In the demo below, I did, and might have a way to improve it.
In figuring out where it went wrong, I started from the idea that the Stroke effect follows non-transparent pixels, so if the mask has irregularities along the edge, the stroke will be irregular too. so I thought maybe my technique was resulting in an irregular edge.
In my original suggestion, I said maybe Fuzziness should be 0. But what I missed there is that if Fuzziness is 0, any variations in the color levels of the magenta might show up in the mask, roughening its edge and therefore the stroke too. So now I realize that it’s probably necessary to increase Fuzziness until the resulting edge is smoothed out and straight. For me, that was a value above 100. So maybe try that next.
That’s one idea. Another idea is this: Are there only a few standard layouts involved, where the photos are always in exactly the same position? If so, instead of masking based on the magenta color, consider reconstructing those layouts using a Solid Color fill layer with a vector mask built using the Rectangle tool in Path mode. What you would end up with is a Solid Color fill layer with rectangular holes styled with white strokes. Then, for each image matching that layout, drop that layer on top of the image. Because they are rectangular vector masks, their edges will be perfectly straight and sharp, and so the strokes will be perfectly sharp. See demo below.
Even if you have some page layout variations, if the mask holes are built as vector paths, the size and position of the rectangles should be relatively fast and easy to duplicate and adjust for each variation. (If you’re comfortable with editing vector paths.) But if there are too many layout variations across the 200 frames, then this idea might not be practical to automate.
Thank you Stephen. I definitely don't want degradation. Please read my two replies to the other contributors. You will see my issue using the unflattened PSD's
By @Ron Canon
JPEG is lossy by nature, however, it depends on the level of compression and the image content on how much the quality suffers.
If you have access to lossless compressed images such as PSD, that is the "best practice" place to start. Additionally, having elements separated into various layers should help with your task over working with a flattened image.
If this is proving problematic, you could always flatten a copy of the layered PSD.
I'll look into your replies to the other contributors and post back if I have any insights.
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