Efficiency in preparing images for e-commerce

[way_phat]

Lets say I have a folder of product images, lets say earrings, of various aspect ratios and pixel dimensions, and I want to get them all to the same aspect ratio and resolution, lets say 1500 pixels square.

That said, within that 1500px square container, the subject/product in each image will need to be scaled to one another. In other words, each pair of earrinsg needs to be scaled in size proportion to others; they may need to be cut apart and moved closer together or further apart so that each may be placed along the same vertical guides; shadows should fall on the same horizontal guide, etc, so that when all the images are viewed together - or against one another - in a grid there is a certain consistency and uniformity.

I understand that the scaling and positioning each element within the square will need to be done by eye/hand, but is it better to setup the 1500px square image w/ guides and then place each image into that container? Or is it better to leave each image at it’s native resolution, proportion it to square, setup proportional guides, and once the positioning handcrafting is completed, then batch output it to 1500px?

Also to be considered is that I’d like the product’s file name to be maintained.

So in summary: what is the most efficient way to get all these shots of diverse size, shape, resolution, into a square with guides for positioning, then ultimately output to 1500 px square with file name maintained?

Is my question/description confusing? Could be, I know I’m confused…

[JJMack]

If all your Products are centered in the middle of the Images canvas and there borders that would allow you to be able to create a square crop containing your product a Photoshop Action that use my Plug-in Aspect Ratio Selection could be recorder to crop your Images to the max size 1:1 centered crop.  That Action could be batched using the Image Processor Pro script that could also resize the cropped images to the different sizes you need.

If your products are not centered you could create a square template the size you want and Batch Populate the template with your images using one of my Photo Collage Toolkit script.  It would save you Images as a JPG file and as a PSD file.  Any image populated with and un acceptable product composition You can fix by editing the Populated PSD template by tweaking the Smart object Image layer's associated transform.  If some of the bottom background layer shows after tweaking the Image size and position. You can paint on the background layer to match the products background.

[way_phat]

JJ, your actions sound interesting.

Thinking about this more after reading your second paragraph, here's what I think would be ideal.

Let's assume I have 20 images of a kind that need to be scaled and moved around relative to each other, then output at the given size. Lets assume all have white BG color and will remain that way, so moving elements around will not be a big deal.

Step 1: A master document is created for the final output size, probably 1600px square.

Step 2: By way of an action or script, all of the designated files are placed as their own layer within the master document. They (the layers) all contain their original file's name.

Step 3. Manually I scale and move around each layer's elements to conform to one another. Having all the files stacked on top of each other in one document makes this a piece of cake.

Step 4. Once all my work is done, another action/script outputs each layer as it's own file, maintaining it's name, at the designated 1600px square size.

So Step 1 is no big deal, Step 3 is the fun manual part, and steps 2 & 4 are automated -- the key point being that file naming is maintained.

Can this be done?

[way_phat · Accepted solution]

Might be other ways but I figured out a way to do what I asked for.

Dr Brown's Stack-O-Matic to load files as named layers. Then select all the layers and File>Export As to send the layers to named files at whatever size & padding I might need.