This weekend I automated part of the process to create a logo for our year overviews.

To create a logo for a year overviews, I manually merge the 12 selected pictures for each year and create a single paint shop pro file of them. Then, I add the text “Year Overview” and the year to them, and of course I want every year overview to have exactly the same logo (with different pictures). Positioning the text, making sure the fonts and colors match, and getting the drop shadow the same is not trivial — especially since there is typically at least a one year gap between the creation time of these images.

I played with the scripting tools in Paint Shop Pro and it’s really quite powerful — it has scripting engine based on Python and has some pretty cool features such as getting user input (I ask the user for which year this overview is, for example). (Download the script).

Automating this took me a while but now I have 3 very consistent logo’s for 2006, 2007 and 2008, and in future years it will be much less daunting to create a new logo to match the previous’ years. Now if only writing the text was as easy as that!