D & P: Templates

[sinus]

Hi all
I try to realise some books/contact-sheets with Design & Print.
There are a lot of possibilities.

For me personally the dynamic templates are specialy interesting, because I can easy print hundrets of images.

Are here some users, who has some templates and are willing to share?
If yes, please upload such templates, would be great.

I think, usually such templates are in this path:
C:\ProgramData\photools.com\IMatch5\printing OR
C:\Users\user xy\AppData\Roaming\photools.com\IMatch5

And there the templates has the extension xxx.imptx
Just upload these imptx as zipped files or if you want upload unzipped, then you must append for example the extension xxx.imptx.txt, otherwise upload is not allowed, I think.

If you want that I upload also some templates, let it me know here. 

[BanjoTom]

I've already found at least one of Sinus's dynamic D&P templates useful and interesting.  I've attached a zip file with the two dynamic templates I use most often.  They both create 1 large image per page, PLUS the most critical/helpful metadata -- at least for me.  One only gives the date of the image; the other provides both date and time.   

And I'd like to see and learn from a LOT more users who have devised useful dynamic D&P templates. 

[sinus]

Thanks, Tom

Very nice of you. Your layout is clear and proper designed.

[sinus]

Here we go, I upload 5 templates, see my attachement.
Once is static, 4 are dynamic.

I work  quite a lot with the hidden - variable.
Say, like Tom, I had two different pages. So we can produce, like Tom did, two different templates with meaninful names.
This is a very good "solution".

In such a case I would tend to produce only 1 template with both pages.
One page I would simply hide, set a 1 to the hidden-field of the page, thats it. If I want the other page, I turn around.
Or I use this variable, when I work with groups (categories):
{Print.Group.Index|numcomp:eq,1,false,true}

We have seveal possibilities with IMatch, as so often. 

Hence if you look at my template look at this hidden-field.
Then specialy the template "sinus-a-lot-of-possibilities.imptx" is quite filled with some tests and possibilites. I work there also with Document-variables, what are very useful.
Like in the help-file (I praise the help as often as possible  thanks Mario) explained, we can use this variable for different purposes.
I use it for example for a document titel and some images on different pages.

I hope you will get some ideas and that these templates will help you a bit.

Of course I am still interested in your templates. 
Have fun.

btw: I will upload the zip in the next post, here only the screenshots, becasue we can only upload 5 files.

[sinus]

the templates 

[Mario]

I will share one of mine. A simple dynamic Portfolio Template, with a full-size shot on the left, two shots on the right with a 1/3 full-height text container.
Two page cover and two page back cover.
Easy to use as a basis for your own photo books or short portfolios.

[sinus]

Thanks, Mario

Looks very good, clean, proper, modern. 

[Mario]

I favor clean designs. Bauhaus tradition and all that 

[sinus]

I made - just fun - a pdf from the template of Mario with 802! images.
All jpgs.

This resulted in a pdf with 539 pages and 850 MB in size.
I forgot to measure exactly the production time, I guess, it took about 1 hour.

So, if you have some good images, you can create very easy a nice pdf.
Nowadays printing such "books" is not more very expensive, hence why not create a book from your last holydays or x-mas or birthday?

Really nice, these templates. Thanks, Mario, for a great tool ... and yes, my beloved script "wordcontact", what I created once, is forgotten. 

[Mario]

Another one I'd like to share.

I'm often asked how to make calendars with D&P.
There is no automatic feature for that (a "date container" is on my to-do list...) but if you are not afraid of a bit of manual work (entering day numbers), you can easily make your own calendars with Design & Print.

The attached template has a generic page template.
You clone this page and clear the "hidden" property.
Then you replace the week and day placeholders with the week and day numbers of the month for this page.

Tip: For fast editing:

1. Click the text container you want to change.
2. Press <F2> to start the editor. Start typing.
3. Click on the next container. This will commit the changes done to the last container automatically.

This way you can set the 30/31 day numbers in maybe a minute or so. 20 - 30 minutes to setup the calendar for a year.
If you want more than one image per page, or on some pages or you want text or overlays - Design & Print lets you do all that :-)

This is how the template and the page for Jan 2017 looks. Click to zoom.

[sinus]

Thank you for sharing this, Mario.

Very useful.
This reminds me:

I wants to create a kind of "timeline" for printing, like your calendar.

But I do not really know, what I want. 

In my head is a kind of template (dynamic), that at the end of a month I could select, say 10 images.
Then I run a template and it would generate, based on the date of the image, a nice timeline.

After a year I could paste all 12 monthes together and I would end with a nce timelline for one year with the most important images.

But maybe it would be better, to do this not monthly, but at the end of each year.
But until now I have no real good idea, how to implement this in a D&P-Template.
I tried some stuff, but without real success.

If someone has a clever idea, please let me know.

[Mario]

The layouts you show as examples are most likely manually created by a graphic artist.

TO do something similar in D&P I would start with setting up a data-driven category which creates the "structure" and then use that in my dynamic template to lay out the pages.
DD cat on year/month maybe week. Filter maybe on rating to get only the best files for each months. This used as input for D&P. Now you have a month / week structure (groups) and can print the files of each group in whatever layout you want.

Or use a static template and drag & drop the files you want to print this months by hand. Quicker.

[sinus]

Thanks, Mario, for your ideas.

Yes, good ideas.

Hm, maybe I could create a cat and if I think during my work, ah, this could be for the timeline, then I could add this image quickly to the cat.
At the end of the month or year I could then let D&P do the work.  (with a template, before created).

I like the idea of dynamic templates (mostly) more then static, because I can so easy change images and also the layout, specialy if I have several pages.
But of course, it depends on the project.

Your calendar-project, there I would use also static templates.

So, everything has its strenght.