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Generate PDF from JPEGs in Separate Directories Grouped by Date/Name

I am looking to generate a PDF report from JPEGs on a server. The JPEGs are in folders named after the location they were taken and the JPEGs are named based on the date they were taken (...\Location 1\15 08 03 description.jpg). Basically I need to grab all pictures taken at each site last month, group them evenly on a page (4 max/page), label the pages with location and date, export PDF.

I have written projects in Powershell and Python so it would be a lot easier for me to operate in these languages but I will consider all suggestions.

So far, my idea is to use switch/case to select the various folder names, for loop through to select all cases, and select all files with .jpg extension within a month range (maybe user prompted?). Where I fall flat is arranging the JPEGs into a PDF as I described.

Edit: So if you follow Mark Setchell's advice below, create the images he suggested and place them in C:\New folder. So suppose you had in this sub directory 3 folders (New folder, New folder (2), etc.) and 2 of these contain the nine colored JPEGS and the third is empty:

clear
$path="C:\New folder\"
$array=@()
$name="file*.jpg"
foreach ($i in Get-ChildItem -path $path -Filter "New*")
{$i0=$path+$i; Get-ChildItem -path $i0 -Filter $name | ForEach-Object {$array+= $i0+"\"+$_.name}
montage $array -tile 2x2 -geometry +5+5 -title $i -page letter montage.pdf}`

My code overwrites the title on all pages with that of the 3rd empty folder. Also, it begins adding JPEGS from the next folder into the previous page, which should be titled as the previous folder and only contain those JPEGS.

Solution

  • Imagine you have 9 JPEG files in a directory, called file1.jpg...file9.jpg and they were created like this as lumps of red, green, blue, cyan, magenta, yellow, black and gray.

    convert -size 300x400 xc:red file1.jpg
convert -size 300x400 xc:lime file2.jpg
convert -size 300x400 xc:blue file3.jpg
convert -size 300x400 xc:cyan file4.jpg
convert -size 300x400 xc:magenta file5.jpg
convert -size 300x400 xc:yellow file6.jpg
convert -size 300x400 xc:black file7.jpg
convert -size 300x400 xc:gray40 file8.jpg
convert -size 300x400 xc:gray80 file9.jpg

    If you now go into that directory and run the following bash script, it will montage the files into pages of A4 with 4 images on each page.

    #!/bin/bash
for f in file*jpg; do
    convert -label "$f" "$f" -depth 8 miff:-
done | montage -tile 2x2 -geometry +5+5 miff:- -page A4 montage.pdf

    The crux of the matter is firstly adding a label to each image based on the filename and secondly sending the label and the image to a MIFF file which is capable of holding many images. The combined group of images are then fed into montage whch arranges them four to a page because of the -tile 2x2. The geometry sets the spacing between the pictures - bigger numbers mean bigger spaces. Finally we tell montage that the paper size is A4 and we want a PDF of all the input images - please!

    Of course you can diddle with the background, the sizing, the spacing and the labelling till you are happy - but this should give you the basic idea.

    You will get out a PDF called montage.pdf with these three pages:

    Page1

    enter image description here

    Page 2

    enter image description here

    Page 3

    enter image description here

    Its shoud be fairly trivial to convert the loop to an ugly Windows-y FOR loop - for loop help.