Question

I have a multilanguage website and need automate the process of updating textlayers in psd-files from a csv-source.

I know that there might be glitches in the psp because of changed widths, but anyway it would help a lot to have the text inside the documents.

What are my options?

EDIT:

Murmelschlurmel has a working solution. Here is the link to the Adobe documentation.

http://livedocs.adobe.com/en_US/Photoshop/10.0/help.html?content=WSfd1234e1c4b69f30ea53e41001031ab64-740d.html

The format of the csv-file is not so nice: you need a column for each variable. I would expect a row for each variable.

It works with Umlaut (ä, ö etc)

EDIT 1:

Another solution is to use com to automate Photoshop. Thats nice if you have a couple of templates (buttons) that need changed text. Here is my script in python that might get you startet.

You need to have an excel file with columns: TemplateFileName, TargetFileName, TargetFormat, Text (ie template.psd, button1 , gif , NiceButton) . The first row of the sheet is not used. The psp template should only have 1 textlayer and can not have layergroups.

import win32com.client import xlrd  spreadsheet = xlrd.open_workbook('text_buttons.xls') sheet = spreadsheet.sheet_by_index(0)  psApp = win32com.client.Dispatch('Photoshop.Application')   jpgSaveOptions = win32com.client.Dispatch('Photoshop.JPEGSaveOptions')   jpgSaveOptions.EmbedColorProfile = True jpgSaveOptions.FormatOptions = 1 jpgSaveOptions.Matte = 1 jpgSaveOptions.Quality = 1  gifSaveOptions = win32com.client.Dispatch('Photoshop.GIFSaveOptions')    for rowIndex in range(sheet.nrows):     if(rowIndex > 0):         template =  sheet.row(rowIndex)[0].value         targetFile = sheet.row(rowIndex)[1].value         targetFileFormat = sheet.row(rowIndex)[2].value         textTranslated = sheet.row(rowIndex)[3].value         psApp.Open(r'D:\Design\Produktion\%s' % template )          doc = psApp.Application.ActiveDocument          for layer in doc.Layers:               if (layer.Kind == 2):                 layer.TextItem.Contents = textTranslated                 if(targetFileFormat == 'gif'):                     doc.SaveAs(r'D:\Design\Produktion\de\%s' % targetFile, gifSaveOptions,  True, 2)                 if(targetFileFormat == 'jpg'):                     doc.SaveAs(r'D:\Design\Produktion\de\%s' % targetFile, jpgSaveOptions,  True, 2) 

Answer 1

You can use ‘Data Driven Design’ to do this. There is also a concept of data driven design in computer science, but as far as I can see this is not not related to the use of the word in Photoshop.

Here is how to proceed:

Load your image in Photoshop and define your variables with Image > Variable > Define.

Then convert your csv to a format Photoshop can read. I had the best experiences with tab delimted text.

Finally load the text file in Photoshop with Images > Variables > Data Set and let Photoshop save all iterations.

When I tried this first, I found that the Photoshop help file didn’t provide enough details. I searched the Internet for photoshop ‘data set’ and found some good tutorials, e.g. this one from digitaltutors.