Any way to batch label/"watermark" photos from an Excel spreadsheet?

[Guest]

Hi everyone! I work at a testing lab that takes photos of tested specimens for clients as part of their test program. Anything from flat painted metal panels to automotive parts, fabrics, LED screens, etc. Anything and everything.

Currently, any time we take photos we have to label each one individually with the test information. I have attached an example below. Essentially we have a PS file with the white header bar, logo, and the test info text layer, and we copy and paste each photo into it and change the info. It can be time consuming! Not so much if a test has 10 samples are they are labelled 1 through 10, but when you have 80 samples/photos and each ID is different and long it can take you a good hour to copy and paste each ID from a spreadsheet.

So my company wants to change this, see if we can simplify this more. Is there a way that Photoshop CS can pull info from a spreadsheet and somehow attach it to each image? Say we have 10 photos, 1 photo per sample, and an Excel spreadsheet with the 10 IDs. Even if it's as a watermark with ONLY text (sans logo), is it even possible for PS to pull from a spreadsheet?

Somehow we just need to add the test number, the hours/months of exposure, and the specimen ID.

Any ideas would help tremendously! If not, we'll go a different route altogether. Thanks in advance!

[davescm]

Take a look at the link below which describes how to use variables - I think it will help you

Creating data-driven graphics in Photoshop

Dave

[Guest]

Great, thank you! That looks promising.

[Chuck Uebele]

How is the info in the spreadsheet being populated? Is that done by someone before the photos are shot? Are you entering information into each image's metadata to for what the sample is? The reason I'm asking is that if might be best to get a script created that automates the entire process. A script could pull the info from a CSV or XML file and apply that info to individual photo and enter that info into the files' metadata, which can then be formatted to include a border with text description.

[Guest]

It would be manually entered before the photos are taken. Currently we make specimen ID sheets for each test, and that Excel spreadsheet populates some bar code labels we use to mark the backs of the samples. We could create a new document for each test and create a spreadsheet specifically for use with the photos.

We are not currently doing anything with the metadata.

[Chuck Uebele]

Where I used to work, we shot a lot of electronic parts. For some of them, we used barcode readers which produced a text file with the info, much like what it sounds like you're doing with your labels. Our script would read that text file, and apply the metadata to the file, the image, and be used to populate our photo database. So that is also a possibility. How would you be referencing the info in the spreadsheet or label to match a certain image? Do you name the images some reference number from your spreadsheet?

Below is a sample of how our script formatted an image. The main "title" was a caveat for classification. Then we would put the description in one corner and the image number and date taken in another. Our logo was placed in the upper left, but I don't have that now.