Finished the templates

After correcting those file names the templates loaded with out any problems. Feels good when a plan comes together. The picture on the left is a sample of what the greeting card templates look like.
After the templates were done Kevin, Leaf (Kevin's new manager), and myself discussed the feasibility of making his computers more secure. His main focus was on not allowing people to just come in and use the machines to surf the Internet. We will meet again to discuss the possible ways accomplishing this. I also mentioned that it might be a good idea to use mac filtering for his desktops to prevent people from bringing in their own computers and circumventing everything he has established. Kevin aslo told me that he purchased a 16 port switch that would be arriving in about 2 weeks. So now we can go on ahead and replace the 3 or 4 4-port switches he is using.

Templates gone bad

I walked in to Fairbanks Fast Foto just knowing that it would only take me about 30 minutes to load these 24 folders (24 folders = 24 templates) with 4 files each into three machines and I would be on my way. My ego was telling me to just go ahead and load all the files on all three machines and then test them. Something stopped me from loading all the files instead I decided to just load 1 template and make sure that it worked. Copied the files onto the computer ran the photo kiosk software and it worked. I saw my jpeg on the menu and was able to insert a picture into the template and order my christmas greeting card.
Next step was to load the rest of the templates and then test each one of them one by one. After I copied the files I restarted the photo kiosk software and saw all my jpegs show up on the template menu. I almost stopped right there, but I decided to select a different template from the first one. I selected a different template but the wrong template appeared. The first template appeared. It was that way for every template selected. I immediately went to the .xml and started looking for errors. I decided to delete the template that all the other ones were defaulting to, just to see what would happen. The next template in line just took it place so all the other templates now were opening up the new template. It did it even with only two templates loaded and in different folders. It took me an hour but I finally figured it out. The photo kiosk did not like the way I had named my files. Here is an example of how the original templates were named 65234_christmas_4x8_v.png mine were named 3BB71_graduation_4x8_v.png. All my templates had the same 3BB part in the filename. Once I changed the BB to 22 it worked just fine. My guess is the photo kiosk software expects the first part of the file nameto be unique numerically. The software only saw one file. I was able to rename about 16 of the templates files before I had to leave due to the store closing. I will go by tomorrow to finish the job and update the blog.
I did test all templates before I left and everything worked fine.

Greeting Cards Template: Part Two

I don't have Photo Shop to create these new template files, but my Linux box has Gimp. Gimp is just like Photo Shop but for Linux and without the price tag. The work I have been doing on these templates is most I have done with photo editing software. Its just not my thing, but I am learning a lot. The first thing I had to do was change those .psd files to .png files.

This was not that hard to do. The Gimp software was able to open the .psd file, which I learned is the photo shop file extension. I opened the .psd file and made sure that the measurement were correct and then saved the file as a .png. Not to bad this is going to be easy.

The task was to create the .xml file that provides the instructions for the photo kiosk. The .xml file is pretty simple to follow. It contains information about the file names, photo location, text location, and fonts. Not all the templates are the same so not only are the file names different but where the photo is located on the template is different. The .xml tells the kiosk software where the photo is measured in inches. The .icon files are text files that basically contain the information about where to put the photo and text, but those numbers were in pixels and not inches. Once I figured that out I had to convert the pixel numbers to inches and then plug them into the .xml file that I have created to use for the new templates.

The final step was to create the .jpeg image for the menu. I had to put the two images together and then resize them to an appropriate size. I had to then flatten the .png image in order to store it as a .jpeg file. Now everything is done. I only need to put the files on the kiosk and see if they work.

Greeting Card Templates

The next task was to convert some third party vendor greeting card templates to be used in the photo kiosk at Fairbanks Fast Foto. The greeting card templates in the photo kiosk consists of 4 different files
1. A .png file of the template that was vertical
2. A .png file of the template that was orientated horizontally.
3. A .jpeg file to was used on the menu screen to be displayed with the other templates.
4. An .xml file that contained all the instructions for the photo kiosk software.

The .png files are the files that actually got printed. And you can choose to have a vertical or horizontal greeting card.

The third-party templates were on a disk and there were no .png, .jpeg, or .xml files on the disk. I thought this was going to be simple. I was hoping I could simply find the folder which contained the template files and copy the new templates there. Not going to be so easy. The new templates had six files for each template. 3 for the horizontal and 3 for the vertical image. The file types were the following.
1. Two .icon files (equivalent to the .jpeg file)
2. Two .psd files (equivalent to the .png file)
3. Two .info files (equivalent to the .xml file)

This coming week I am going to see if I can get these templates to work. I will see how it goes.