From the course: Motion Graphics for Video Editors: Working with Type

Automating multiple titles with data sets

From the course: Motion Graphics for Video Editors: Working with Type

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Automating multiple titles with data sets

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- If you have a lot of lower thirds to make, Photoshop has a great option called Data Sets which lets you import information from a spreadsheet. You can create this using a tool like Excel or Apple Numbers. Let me show you. What you'll ultimately need to do is generate the data. You see here I have information in a table. Speaker name and location. I then save file, export to CSV, or comma-separated values. And this makes a CSV file. You can do the same thing from Microsoft Excel. Just create a table and then choose File, Save As, and you'll see the option there for CSV, for comma-separated value, and that'll spit it out for you. Then you go back into Photoshop, and just set things up a little bit. Let's continue to work with our same design, but I need to define a few things. So I'm gonna select the first field here, Name. I'm gonna choose Image, Variables, Define. Now this allows me to choose the name here and define what happens. In this case, I'm gonna tell it to do Text Replacement, and it's gonna replace it with this variable here. Now, you can give this a better name if you want. In fact, you might want to switch over, and select whatever you called that, such as Speaker_Name, and just paste that in so it knows to use that exact text. Now, if I click to go forward here, you see that I can view other layers. So, let's go back and choose Location, and I'll also select Text Replacement here, and we'll just copy this header called Location_Text. Copy and paste it in. Now, from the drop-down list here, you see that those options become available, and they'll be listed if you wanted to select. But, in this case, we've defined Location as using the column Location_Text, and the Name is pulling Speaker_Name. Then I can click OK. Now, what it's done, is those are properly defined. Now, what we can do, is pull in the data. Now, Image, Variables, Data Sets. What I need to do is load the data set. So I'll click the Import button, and choose the file. Let's navigate to the downloaded files. And you'll see a CSV file there, the data sets. Then just click Open. Now, you can use the information to define things. I'm not gonna use the first column for data set names, so I'll just click OK. And you see it starts to locate things, such as the Location_Text, and the Speaker_Name. And if I click through here, you see that it found it. Great! Now, if I keep clicking through, you'll notice that it actually took each set there and created a new option. In fact, if I click Preview here, and I click through each data set, you'll notice that they update. There they are. That works great! Now, what I can do, is simply click OK to store that. Now, those data sets are inside of there, but they're not currently being used. If you want to apply them, you need to export them. So, what we can do, is select File, Export, Data Sets as Files. Now, just choose a location. I'll go to the same exercise folder and choose Exports, and click Choose. Choose what data you want to use. You can pick an individual data set, or all. Tell it how to name it. For example, the document name plus an underscore, followed by the data set name or number. When ready, click OK. It'll generate all the files. If we go to that folder, you'll notice that they're all stored. In fact, there they all are. Let's make that a little larger. And what you'll notice, is that each iteration has been stored. There are all of the files that we created for each name from that spreadsheet. And it pulled the correct title and city from the document. The use of data sets is a huge time saver. If you have a lot of information to use for a project, instead of populating each one, one at a time, you can easily take those data sets, and apply them to one template graphic, and then generate these individual files. Now, this might seem a bit complex, so if you need to, go back and watch the movie once again. But, essentially, all you need is a Photoshop template and a comma-separated value file, or CSV file, that can be created from any spreadsheet.

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