Work Flow to Drop 60 different student images onto background template

[pauland]

I think the real answer here is to have the right background when the photograph is taken!

The subject looks well lit, so I wonder why the background wasn't good enough as it is.

[gwpriester]

I suppose I assumed too much in my initial post. Since the forum is listed as Graphics and animation discussion for Designer Pro, Photo & Graphic Designer and Xtreme products and there is another forum related to web design, I assumed it would be understood this is for print. But I did not specifically state that, so: This is a print project....they will print 5 x 7 prints for each student. I'm using the latest version of Designer Pro.

Fair enough. It depends on how solid and consistent the green is. And if the subjects of the photo are wearing any color that is close to this green.

In the Photo Tool is a new tool called Select Colors to Enhance (shown in the Before image).

I selected the blue, adjusted the tolerance, then added the orange background.

This is not a perfect solution because portions of Mr. Ford's face and shirt dropped out and I had to edit the shape of the orange background not to include these areas.

I totally agree with Paul's comment about would it not have been easier to take the photos right in the first place and why a green background unless the end use was special effects of some kind? Nobody looks good against a green background. Except maybe a martian.

[Egg Bramhill]

Nobody looks good against a green background.

[gwpriester]

A very mooving and udderly persuasive rebuttal, Egg.

From my own experience, I find often it is better to put your head down and just get something done than to spend hours trying to find an easy or automated method. I liken repetitive tasks to a kind of Zen meditation.

[mwenz]

...I liken repetitive tasks to a kind of Zen meditation.

I also find it relaxing. To a point.

I just am am laying out a cookbook. The type of text is highly repetitive, recipe name, sub title, perhaps an image, ingredient list, directions, callous here and there, that sort of thing. The bulk of the formatting was done across the 300+pages in a matter of seconds using conditional styles. Now the rest of laying out can begin.

While applying styles over and over and over could be seen as relaxing, I saved the relaxing part for the rest of the job...the actual thinking part.

[hseiken]

Why don't you size up all the images to where you want them, create a bitmap copy at super high res, then use the color transparency effect in the photo editing menu? If they're all the same color, you should be able to do a whole page like that. It won't be all 60, but at least you can knock out a page at a time.

In terms of people talking about scripted image editing, GIMP has extensive scripting and is free. I haven't ever messed with batch processing in it though.

[Sadler]

This may be a little more involved than you're looking for and as someone mentioned earlier it will depend on how good your green screen is but here goes...

Rent yourself a copy of After Effects for a month
Import your images onto the timeline as an image sequence.
(After FX should allow you to create a sequence at the original resolution of your images.)
Key your images and drop in your background and text.
Export as an image sequence. Et voila!