I have a 92 page catalogue (one image per page, multiple products per image) and no product codes on the image for each product.
Does anyone know of a photoshop action to allow entry of a stock code (<15chars text), that will create a filled, outline box with the text inside? It will be awful to have to do them by hand - there are hundreds and hundreds of products.
If all images have the same code, you could record the action which basically creates a macro of your activity for a single image. (Look for the record/playback buttons on the actions pane.)
If all the images have different codes, you might be better off writing (or commissioning) a small script to process the images, such as a PHP script with GD or C# and a graphics object; in both cases reading from a file so it applies the correct code to the image. However this method wouldn't give you an Adobe Photoshop document at the end of the day with an editable text box; it would be a flattened image (such as a TIFF) with the product code already rendered as part of the image.
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We make images like the following in Excel. The raw image is imported and positioned in the generally correct area within the annotations, which are themselves images linked to ranges, the contents of which differ depending on selections made by the user.
The absolute position and dimensions of each annotation must be adjusted manually for every image. The number of sample names can vary (up to 12 lanes of samples). The size ladder on the left can also vary depending on the size of the protein being analyzed.
After everything is correctly sized and aligned, the range containing the raw image + annotations is copied and saved as a jpg (which is then imported into an Access database).
Though we've automated some parts of this with VBA, the process of tweaking every image (widths of columns, text size, position of size ladder, etc.) can get very tedious. Surely there is some software out there that will make this process more efficient. It takes one of our staff members hours to adjust and finalize about 10-20 of these images.
Any recommendations are welcomed.
This procedure is called electrophoresis. Samples (in this case proteins) are loaded into a polyacrylamide gel (each sample in its own "lane") and pulled through the gel with electricity. This process separates all of the proteins in each lane by size and charge.
The "ladder" is a solution of various proteins of known size. It's used to determine the sizes of the proteins in the other lanes.
The image on the left contains the range of sizes in the ladder (in this case 10, 15,...150, 200). Each "step" in the ladder image is aligned with the black bands that appear in the ladder lane in the experiment (the actual ladder lane that contains the black bands is not present in this case...it's cropped post-alignment to improve the overall look of the image).
The images on the right are protein names and point to the location on the gel where that particular protein should appear. The protein Actin, for example, is supposed to come out at around 42 kilodaltons. The fact that there is a prominent black band in that location is good supporting evidence that this sample contains Actin protein.
Many gels will also describe the sample source at the top or the bottom. So, for example, if the sample in lane 1 was derived from mouse liver cells, lane 1 would be annotated as "mouse liver."
The raw image is captured in the lab and is saved as a jpg. This jpg is then manually copied directly into an Excel sheet, where extraneous parts of the image are cropped. The cropped image is then moved to within the area of the worksheet that contains the annotations (ladder, protein names, sample names). These annotations are themselves images (linked to other ranges in the workbook that change with every experiment...protein names, samples names, ladder type can be different for every experiment). These annotation images require fine positioning in each case (as described previously) to align with the lanes and with the protein sizes. Once everything is aligned, it is saved as a jpg and moved into Access.
My question is...Is there software already out there designed specifically for tasks like these? Just as Excel is not a database program, it is also not an image annotation program. I want to know if there is an application out there, ready to go, that is specifically designed to annotate images with elements that can vary from image to image.
Of course, there will still be a need for manually moving elements around the image to get everything aligned (I'm not looking for a miracle here). I'm thinking that there has to be something better than Excel for this.
I am making the invoice part of an application, and at this moment I am done with the invoice generation (adding products and stuff).
The next step is to have a report displaying the invoice data, ready to print.
That works too. I used Fortes Reports because it is free, easy to work with, and has a free PDF export filter, and a Preview component, so it has everything I need.
Now, my problem is that I must allow my users to Annull an invoice. So when an invoice was emitted, if there was a problem with it, I cannot just delete it later, I must Annull it (I'm not sure that is how you call it - maybe make it void), but basically the invoice stays the same (in printed form) EXCEPT we must write/draw diagonally on top of the entire invoice one word: ANNULLED with RED color.
That means I will make a new report for this case (annulled invoices) and use this one whenever the user wants to print an annulled invoice
So now in Fortes Report there is an RLAngleLabel component that allows me (in theory) to do just that: draw/write the word ANNULLED on the report. But my problem is that I add the label just fine in the btDetail RLBand, only I just can't see it in Preview, and I have no idea what I am doing wrong. If it's not visible in designtime preview, I assume it wont be visible in runtime neither.
Should I place it in a specific way? Should I add it at runtime somehow? I cant seem to be able to access the report's Canvas so I could draw it in some event...
Does anyone have any experience with what I am describing?
In order to reproduce my problem, just add a RLReport control on your form, add bands to it (Titleband, ColumnHeaderBand, DetailBand), and on a detailBand (DetailGridBand)place an AngleLabel, then right click on the report and choose Preview...
If I place the AngleLabel on the TitleBand or on ColumnHeaderBand, then it shows in preview, except that I need to place this Angled label ON TOP of the contents of the invoice, not on the header info.
In the past I used a BMP image as big as the invoice (in order to have it transparent so I would see the contents beneath it), but that made my exported PDF report 5MB in size, and that is a little too much (PNG was not working correctly - I think it would not display it transparent or something like that, so I was stuck to using BMP).
Is there any way of achieving what I want (described above)?
For whoever encounters this dilema, I reached the conclusion that I should still go with displaying an image containing the desired text as background and setting the bands to Transparent.
The angleLabel approach seems to be unknown, so I dropped it.
I use this time a PNG file that is about 30-40 KB in size and that does not bother me to have it added to the size of the final PDF.
A lot better than the previous BMP image I used before (that increased the size of the PDF file with about 5 MB).
The neweest version of RLReports works with PNG images. That saved me
Also if you have any RLDraw objects on your report, you must set it's brush style to bsClear, so it would allow the background to be visible.
I've loaded a PDF Document into a UIView Class, and displayed it on screen using CGDrawRect. So Now I can visually see the PDF: What I want to do is have the user click certain points of the file, which will bring up the key board, allowing the user to directly add text to the PDF, which will later need to be rendered - some direction or guide would be very helpful ?
I understand its a lot simpler to draw a PDF from scratch then to manipulate it
I also understand Quartz 2d may be the way to go, but a bit confused with the samples
There are two possible scenarios here:
Editing existing PDF text is very difficult, even with something like PSPDFKit. It is no accident that there are no PDF-based word processors.
Annotating PDF content is more straightforward:
Add any additional content as subviews to the UIView that contains the PDF document. Additional content can be in the form of text, vectors or images - anything that can be added to a UIView. At this point you do not need to worry whether the added content is "part of" the PDF.
When you want to render the added content to the PDF, simply render the container view (which contains both the original document and annotations) to a PDF Context using UIGraphicsBeginPDFContextToFile and UIGraphicsBeginPDFPage.
Check this question and answer for a simple example and a method for ensuring that the PDF is rendered as vectors, not as a bitmap: Rendering a UIView into a PDF as vectors on an iPad - Sometimes renders as bitmap, sometimes as vectors
I am looking at building a simple PDF generator. The user will have several text fields and a couple image fields to enter information, and that will appear in specific spots on the PDF. I know how to add an image already in the app to the PDF, but not sure how to take an image that is chosen from Camera Roll on one view to be in the PDF on the next view. Suggestions?
I work for a window manufacturing company and would like to add the functionality within the website for customers to be able to customise a product online with a visual representation when adding parts to the order.
So my question really is when parts are selected is it possible to build an SVG image via ajax or maybe Raphael?
The parts would be:
width
height
color
glass type
grid on outside of glass and so on
thanks in advace
I would do it with carefully crafted images. You can easily grow / shrink an image, hide/display an image, and overlay them (keep transparency) all with javascript on the client.
I would not do it with AJAX, instead I'd just load all the images and display, hide or overlay as needed (assuming the number of options are within reason).