0

I'm more of an artist who just knows enough about coding to be dangerous, so I'm not sure if this is even possible to accomplish, BUT I'm working on a children's book for a client which we created in Photoshop. The client plans to sell the book on-demand as a PDF, fully customized to each customer. ie Changing the cover to [child's name]'s Book and changing the names of characters to the names of the kid and parents buying the book.

I'm trying to figure out if there's any easy bulk way to tell Photoshop to go through each page and change "Mom Name" to "Susan" so we can automate the process and I don't have to manually change the document every time my client gets an order. Bonus points if this process can be streamlined enough that he can update his own PDFs without my help.

Improve this question
2
  • 3
    Things like that are usually done in InDesign I think. However if you have everything done in Photoshop already (.psd's), you still can do this with a script. For example you can collect all the .psd from a specific folder, change contents of specific text items, export all the pages to a temporary folder, then combine everything to a pdf with Automator script for example (if you're on OSX). – Sergey Kritskiy Aug 7 '18 at 20:28
  • @SergeyKritskiy: Please do not answer in the comments. – Wrzlprmft♦ Aug 8 '18 at 9:11
0

This is not the answer you were hoping for.

Please do not. Do not prepare an improvised "solution" on Photoshop, this should be a system, probably with a database where the client types the data, payments, work orders, etc, then the pdf is processed.

This should be done in a server-side scripting language.

A primitive solution is using a library, for example, http://phptopdf.com/ I am posting it just as an example.

This library should extract the data from a database.

Improve this answer
0

I think it can be a home-grown solution with a script, or photoshop variables, or both. In Photoshop it would be possible to have complex effects on artwork as opposed to other software or methods and (at this time) Adobe is working on a cloud-service to enable great personalization via customer-facing web input!

While manually selecting the order data as an in-house operation is certainly possible, the system for doing so with no intervention by you would at this time be in violation of the Adobe 'nobody except the licensed Photoshop owner should use this software, such as web customers' clause - that's one reason they're exploring the cloud service now.

Improve this answer

Your Answer

By clicking “Post Your Answer”, you agree to our terms of service, privacy policy and cookie policy

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.