creating drag and drop templates in PS....

I'm trying to figure out how to create drag and drop templates in PS CS4. What I want to do is create a collage template where I can easily drag photos into the collage and they will be automatically re-sized to the size I have specified on the template. So far, the closest I've come is to create a template using smart object layers and I can easily replace the photos, the only problem with this is that I must manually re-size the photos. Is there anyway to tell PS to automatically scale the photos to a certain pre-determined size? This seems like it should be pretty straight forward and easy but I can't seem to figure it out.

If you resize the SO in the template, that should work…

Unless I don't understand what you are asking.

It should work fine as long as the new image is the same ratio as the smart object. I don't think there is a way to have it automatically adjust a 2x3 ratio image into a 4x5 ratio smart object. I don't think you'd want it to actually.

René Damkot wrote in post #13513008
If you resize the SO in the template, that should work…

Unless I don't understand what you are asking.

D Thompson wrote in post #13513076
It should work fine as long as the new image is the same ratio as the smart object. I don't think there is a way to have it automatically adjust a 2x3 ratio image into a 4x5 ratio smart object. I don't think you'd want it to actually.

I can re-size the photo as a smart object but I want it to happen automatically (aspect ratio is not an issue). For instance, if my smart object is 400x600 and I want to replace the contents with a photo that's 4000x6000 pixels, I want it to automatically be scaled to 400x600. As it stands now, when I replace the contents of my smart object, it takes on the size of the new photo instead of automatically scaling it down and I have to edit it to the proper size.
I'm attempting to create collages on a fairly large scale that contain about 10 different photos each and having to edit the size of ten photos for every single collage is a huge time waster (the photos in the collage are not all the same size so a batch processing will not work). I just want to be able to insert the photos into my template and have them automatically scaled to a pre-determined size.

jason, do you use lightroom? the print module in LR will do this. but it is not as flexible with respect to page layout/design as PS is. if you need more than what LR can offer, perhaps you can combine the two? the print module can output a entire page layout as a jpg, and then you can use that as a smart object/layer in your PS layout??

I think I figured out a way to do it, at least it seems to work as long as the ratio is consistent. It might be a little clunky though.

Right click on your SO and choose Edit Contents. Click OK on the window saying to save to commit.

Go to File/Place and choose the image. This should add a SO layer with the new image. Flatten. Save. It should update the original file with the newly selected image.

Hope this helps.

jra wrote in post #13513740
I can re-size the photo as a smart object but I want it to happen automatically (aspect ratio is not an issue). For instance, if my smart object is 400x600 and I want to replace the contents with a photo that's 4000x6000 pixels, I want it to automatically be scaled to 400x600.

Assuming all "input" images are the same size, it should work, provided you start the smart object in the template being the size of the original image, then scaled down.

If you later drop an image 2000x3000 in the SO, you'd need to scale it up to 4000x6000 first…

René Damkot wrote in post #13517105
Assuming all "input" images are the same size, it should work, provided you start the smart object in the template being the size of the original image, then scaled down.

If you later drop an image 2000x3000 in the SO, you'd need to scale it up to 4000x6000 first…

Ok.....I figured it out What I was doing to scale down an image was clicking on the smart object and editing the image size to where I wanted it. Instead of doing that, I should've been using the "transform" option to make the photo my desired size. When using the "transform" option instead of an image re-size, it carries over to any image that I add.
Thanks for all of your help

Glad you got it done