Scripting Lesson 2

This tutorial was written by, and is copyright to, Kia ~ 12 January 2009.
Please refer to my TOU

This was written in psp X2 but should work in any version from 8 up.
For this tutorial you will need:

Paint Shop Pro
Tag and Font of your choice
List of names (.txt file, 1 name per line)

This tutorial assumes you have a working knowledge of your psp program and working with layers, but little to no knowledge of scripting - yet!

Remember to save often.

I have a yahoo group to offer help and assistance with these tutorials - CLICK HERE
To help me to help you please let me know which lesson and which step of that lesson you are having a problem with =)
Even better if you can send me a screenshot of the error as well.

You can use this arrow to help you keep your place =)

So, you've made your tag base and Format Script
- now you just need to do the adding names bit.
You can download my version of the "Multitag Script" HERE

Original credit for the "ss-Multiple Tag Script" goes to SuzShook.

Preparation * Step 1 *

First you need to place the Multitag script in your "Trusted Scripts" folder.
You need to create a list of names to use - probably people on your Always List.
This is a simple .txt file with 1 (one) name per line

Preparation * Step 2 *

Next you need to edit the variables to suit your tag/pc system.
I recommend Notepad++ for editing scripts and best of all - it's FREE! Otherwise notepad will do.

Find the script in windows explorer and right click it -> Open With -> (notepad or notepad++)

First things first - so we don't edit the master copy, File -> Save As ->...
Save the script with a new name in your "Trusted Scripts" folder, with a .pspScript file extension.

A note about .txt and .pspScript file extensions

I like to name everything the same as my tag so it's easy to match everything up.
In this case I would call mine AG_PhotoBlast-Multitag.pspScript
Look for the following section - near the top.

Making sure you do not change the layout, carefully insert the following information between the relevant ' '

We do not need to fill out everything. For this first time I'm keeping it simple and we're just going to run the script for a .jpg output.

ListOfNames - this is the path on your PC to your list of names

for example ListOfNames = r'C:/sigs/Lists/tagnames.txt' or ListOfNames = r'C:/Users/Name/Desktop/tagnames.txt'

If you're not sure of the filepath of your list of names, find your list and right click for the properties, it will give the exact location so you just need to add the actual file name to it. - Great idea Fi =)

SaveFile - this is the path on your PC where you want to save the finished tag (make sure this folder exists as the script will not create it for you).

for example SaveFile = r'C:/sigs/CILM/A_Guerra/AG_PhotoBlast/'

FormatScript - this is the path to your "Format Script" (in your "restricted scripts" folder).

for example FormatScript = r'C:/My PSP Files/scripts-restricted/AG_PhotoBlast.PspScript'

These next two are optional, but I really recommend using them to help identify your tags.

Prefix - This is any string of (legal) characters you want to appear BEFORE your tag name.

for example Prefix = 'AG_PhotoBlast'

Identifier - This is any string of (legal) characters you want to appear AFTER your tag name.

for example Identifier = 'Kia'

The Multitag Script will save your tags as Prefix-Name-Identifier.jpg
In this example it would end up as AG_PhotoBlast-Name-Kia.jpg

Legal characters are A-Z; a-z; 0-9; Underscore, hyphen, all the usual ones for file names.

The next 6 lines are pretty self explanatory. So, I'm just going to give you the settings for this example.
SaveType = 2 - because we're going with a simple .jpg
TextType = 0 -just straight horizontal text
Rotation = 0 - no rotation - staying simple here
TopBottomLocation = 2 - text is going to go at the bottom of our tag
LeftRightLocation = 1 - text will be in the center
ConvertToRaster = 1 - we do want the script to convert to raster because we haven't done that in our "Format Script".

OK, save your edited script - you did give it a new name when we started right?

We're nearly there... * Step 3 *

Make sure your "Script Output Palette" (SOP) is activated - I usually have this turned off, but it is a very useful tool to find out what caused a script to fail.
To turn it on got to View -> Palettes -> Script Output; Or Shift:F3
Open up your tag base, duplicate and close the original (like you need reminding).
Select your text tool and set your required font, size (points not pixels) and colors (if, like me, you didn't include it in your "Format Script").
Select your multitag script from the dropdown box (0) and click the run selected script button (1).
Sit back and watch as your PC does all the work for you.

If something quirky happens and your text gets shrunk or gets huge, just change your font-size setting in psp. It's a quirk, sometimes it does it, sometimes it doesn't, sometimes it's too big, sometimes too small.
Mine, at the moment, has to be set to a smaller size than I want.

If all went well, you now have a folder full of tags ready to send out =)
If it didn't then join the yahoo group (link up top) or mail me and I'll help you out,
just please remember, I am in England so maybe in a different time zone to you.

Yes, just 3 steps to this bit.
A total of 5 steps, 1 script to record and 1 script to edit a few variables!

Once you are comfortable doing this it's time to move on to Lesson 3!

Lesson 3 - Adding Names To Tags To Be Animated.

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