Eric,
I'm working on an upcoming photo contest. We will have images judged and selections provided on a spreadsheet. Immediately after results are provided, there will be a slideshow of the winning images. There will be up to 60 images selected and ranked covering 5 separate topic areas (12 ranked images per category).
What suggestions do you have for workflow? Is there a way to upload a spreadsheet with image selections and ranking? Can this be loaded into the Supplemental IPTC fields and used for sorting? Ideally I would create a slideshow with variables displayed on the screen showing the Club, Photographer, Image Title, and Ranking.
Given the short turnaround, it's not possible to manually enter the data using the file name, title, or description fields, but if that can be uploaded from a spreadsheet, it would be very helpful.
Yes, this can be done with Code Replacement. You'll have to save your spreadsheet as a tab-separated text file (each column will be separated on a line by a tab character). The first column should be the filename. Then you'd use variables, specifically the {filename} variable along with Code Replacement and in the Metadata (IPTC) Template you'd enter your Code Replacement delimiter, the {filename} variable, and the selector #n and the closing Code Replacement delimiter to lookup the replacement for that field.
So let's say in your text file it looks like this:
filename[tab]title for filename[tab]club for filename[tab]photographer[tab]etc...
Given '=' as your Code Replacement delimiter (you can choose whatever character you want, this is just what I use), then in the Title field you would enter:
={filename}#1=
You would do likewise for other fields, including things like generating a caption for the image by creatively using the metadata in your Code Replacement text file.
Then you'd apply the Metadata (IPTC) Template to your images. The images would now contain the metadata. You could then use the variables for the fields you just filled in for your Slideshow.
HTH,
-Kirk
