Automating tasks for technical specs/brochures

[kev]

Hi Gurus,

Programmer here. I've been asked to do technical spec brochures for the company. Considering I'm not good at photoshop at all, I'd like to do automate as much as possible and have to do the least amount of manual work possible and make a template completely reusable.

I need these automated parts :

- Image of product easily replaceable
- List of specs easily editable
- Can add tabs and highlight one of them in order to show what category of products you are viewing (additional explanation : say, if you were looking at a product related to video surveillance you would have the tabs "cable", "camera", "recorder"; if you were looking at a product related to computers you would have the tabs "HDD", "processor", "monitor", "accessories"). The individual tabs must adjust their length so that the tab bar stays at constant length
- More generally, I want the individual visual elements to be able to adapt to different dimensions to keep the general look of the page aesthetic

And I need these constants :

- Logo and address at the top
- "Specifications" subtitle
- Tab bar is of constant length

I have an idea on how to program it with vector graphics in Java but it seems like an overcomplicated solution for this task. Is there a way to do this kind of task in Photoshop ?

 

[MrToM]

In a nutshell......no.

PS is primarily an image editing program and although it does have some options to output to HTML / CSS its geared more toward the images rather than functionality.

Depending on what format this 'brochure' has to be in, PS could be used for producing the 'image' part but as to tabs and resizing well, thats more a HTML web page sort of thing.

I'm unsure as to what to suggest really, not knowing how this brochure is to be displayed.....PDF may be an option or even HTML, which can be opened in any browser and would give you the exact functionality you need.

Sorry I can't give a more 'exact' answer but one things for sure, PS is not going to do what you want....except image editing.

Regards.
MrTom.

 

[kev]

In a nutshell......no.

PS is primarily an image editing program and although it does have some options to output to HTML / CSS its geared more toward the images rather than functionality.

Depending on what format this 'brochure' has to be in, PS could be used for producing the 'image' part but as to tabs and resizing well, thats more a HTML web page sort of thing.

I'm unsure as to what to suggest really, not knowing how this brochure is to be displayed.....PDF may be an option or even HTML, which can be opened in any browser and would give you the exact functionality you need.

Sorry I can't give a more 'exact' answer but one things for sure, PS is not going to do what you want....except image editing.

Regards.
MrTom.

Thanks Tom. This answers my question.

For info, if anyone is asking themselves a way to do this, Processing has the option to export PDFs as well as ways to draw vector graphics. I guess HTML can do too.