Mike Chaney's Tech Corner

Technical Discussions => Computer Software => Topic started by: PaulV on November 16, 2012, 05:04:43 PM



Title: software that uses a spreadsheet and jpegs
Post by: PaulV on November 16, 2012, 05:04:43 PM
I'm trying to find software that will take information from a spreadsheet file and put the info below an image that comes from a folder of jpeg files. 

I'm doing work for a school and they need an image of a child with the child's name, homeroom teacher and grade below the image area that I can print on a label for them to put on the child's folder.  Right not I'm fed up with the companies that offer this service and I can use QImage for printing the labels.  I need an efficient way to get the information below the child's image.  I don't want to have to use Photoshop, that will take forever. 

Any ideas?

Thanks,
Paul


Title: Re: software that uses a spreadsheet and jpegs
Post by: Terry-M on November 16, 2012, 05:23:12 PM
Hi Paul,
Quote
I'm trying to find software that will take information from a spreadsheet file and put the info below an image that comes from a folder of jpeg files.
The only way I can think of at the moment would be to copy and paste data from the spread sheet into the IPTC data of each jpeg image.
You would then set up linked floating text, specified as the IPTC data, under each image on the page.
If this is a regular requirement, a Qimage template could be made, complete with the text information, that would make it very easy once the IPTC data has been entered.
The tedious part would be copying and pasting from the spreadsheet.  ;)

You could work the other way round and insert the images into the spread sheet but that is also tedious and difficult to get a nice layout on a page.
Terry


Title: Re: software that uses a spreadsheet and jpegs
Post by: ed_k on November 17, 2012, 01:38:07 PM
Not absolutely certain, but I think that IMatch (a digital image management program) could help with this.
http://www.photools.com/imatch-3-overview/imatch-3-feature-overview/

An easy way to get a fast answer is to leave a question at the IMatch forum.
http://ptforum.photoolsweb.com/


Title: Re: software that uses a spreadsheet and jpegs
Post by: Terry-M on November 17, 2012, 03:30:36 PM
Seeing the previous post and looking at the link it gave me the idea to Google the question.
One link was this:
http://virtualmobiliser.omf.org/batch-import-iptcexif-meta-data-from-spreadsh (http://virtualmobiliser.omf.org/batch-import-iptcexif-meta-data-from-spreadsh)
It mentions a program called Exifer but I have a program called ExifTool GUI which can be used to import IPTC data into image files.
You could select a set of images and import the same data, do it individually. You may need to convert the spead sheet to a csv file to do it. I would not be sure if this is any easier than copy-paste into IPTC in Qimage as I suggested in reply #1.
ExifTool GUI (free) can be obtained here:
http://freeweb.siol.net/hrastni3/foto/exif/exiftoolgui.htm (http://freeweb.siol.net/hrastni3/foto/exif/exiftoolgui.htm)
Note that you require exftool.exe too, link is on above website.
Terry


Title: Re: software that uses a spreadsheet and jpegs
Post by: rayw on November 18, 2012, 11:56:21 AM
Hi Paul,
Based on what you have said, there will be a bit of manual effort required to cross reference the photos to the spread sheet data. OpenOffice spread sheet allows images to be included, and from the school's point of view that alone probably would be worthwhile. Once they've put the images matched to the other data in some sort of order, with a bit of fiddling you can get a print of whatever you want to more or less any size or layout maybe by copying the data into a document and applying templates. Of course, it depends on the size of the data set - sometimes it takes far longer to find an 'automatic' solution, and then find it doesn't do what is needed, compared to just sitting down and getting on with manual 'cut and paste'.

Best wishes,

Ray