Copying and pasting text into Photoshop

[Prepper]

We have 15 files that are being printed in up to 50 languages. The translations come to us in Word. Is there any way to copy that Word text and paste it into Photoshop AND retain the formatting already applied in Photoshop?

If not, is there a work around to achieve the same thing? Without having to manually reformat every single line we copy and paste into these files?

Thanks for any input.

 

[dabob]

Don't know about text into photoshop (not a good idea imho) but place the .ps file in InDesign . . paste the text into it - assign style sheets . . . repeat . .. shouldn't be that hard

 

[Prepper]

Yes, I know, we should have just rebuilt the files in Indesign before we started down the translation process but we're pretty far down that road now. Our designers built the files in Photoshop with all kinds of special effects applied like inner and outer glows, faux bold, drop shadows, strokes, and with non-standard fonts they could find anywhere and then it gets passed of to typesetting to typeset them into about 50 other languages. The time it takes to do these is incredible. They get typeset and sent off to our translators for proofing, then when we have to enter corrections we have to go thru all that again, re-making the PDF, updating the link in Indesign and re-exporting a new PDF. A nightmare of a process but it's what we're stuck with now.
I've never worked with style sheets myself but I'm thinking that the inner and outer glows and those kinds of effects couldn't be duplicated in Indesign that way?
I will look into them more though as it may be helpful on other projects.
Thanks

 

[dabob]

Inner and Outer glows are available in InDesing along with a passel of other "effects" . . . IMHO it would be worth the time fixing it to do it right because if you have to fix everything 50 times - and it takes 10x longer than if it were done correctly well according to my math . . you would be coming out way ahead . . .

but then that just my 2 cents . .. Good Luck

 

[Stephen Marsh]

First, curse the designers for their lack of foresight.

Second, copy and paste text from a plain text editor such as Note Pad, Text Edit etc. Watch out for accented, foreign and non roman characters etc.

Third, look into using Photoshop variable text to semi-automate the production.


Stephen Marsh

 

[rich apollo]

Stephen is right, text variables/pixel replacement might make this really easy.

And, you should definitely find an old Gypsy woman to curse the designers.

Why isn't it the designers' responsibility to provide everything ready to go? Why isn't this their problem?

 

[Stephen Marsh]

Stephen is right, text variables/pixel replacement might make this really easy.

I believe that this could be really easy if setup correctly for variables, however the original Photoshop files may need to be edited to handle the variables correctly (multiple lines using different effects to be turned into individual lines for each effect). The devil is in the details. The job should have been “designed” with foresight as a candidate for variable data production.

InDesign data merge (variables) is great, offering a lot of flexibility and power for typographic effects, including effects. That being said, it may or may not be able to achieve what the designers have “designed”.

Another alternative that is generally forgotten or ignored is Illustrator variables. Illustrator offers a lot of options for a designer to “go wild” and do things that can’t be done in InDesign (and in other ways Illustrator is more limited in typographic control). For whatever reason, Adobe decided to force end users to have to mess around with complex XML rather than using “standard” comma or tab delimited text files as data source input. The good news is that there is a great script which will accept tab/comma separated text input and create the necessary XML on the fly!

Prepression: Illustrator – Introducing the VariableImporter Script


Stephen Marsh