How I Automated My Design Work Using This Underrated Photoshop Feature

Master variable data, text, and image batching in Photoshop helped me 10X my creative process. Here's how I did it.

Every creative in college football knows this feeling: the anxiety from receiving a custom recruiting graphic request, to add on top of the pile of all the other graphics necessary to deliver by the end of the week. It’s overwhelming and uninspiring when deadline after deadline begins to waste your time.

The job is never easy, and for many departments that are understaffed, it’s difficult to get additional support with all the financial constraints.

So how do we fix that?

The solution came to me when I began researching how the print industry mass produced business cards and learned how other schools were solving for this: Variables and Data Sets.

If the idea of recovering 20+ hours a week sounds as incredible to you as it did to me, buckle up. Here’s the system that helped me generate hundreds of tailored designs for social + recruiting with basic setup and a few clicks.

Note: The goal here is not to show you how every feature works, but to focus on how I specifically implemented them.

What you need:

• Adobe Photoshop

• Adobe Bridge

• Google Sheets (or Microsoft Excel)

Context

The best way to use this feature is to identify areas where you are required to produce multiple versions of a template.

Some examples include: Happy Birthday graphics, Game Week (social infographics), etc.

The key is to set things up strategically in your Photoshop file by:

Defining Your Variables

• These are the elements that will change in each version, such as text and images.

• Clearly name your layers in Photoshop. Make these simple and reuse them in your spreadsheet.

  • NOTE: Create a new layer called “file” and turn the fill down to 0%. This will be used to batch set the file name of each graphic

• Using the Variables panel, define your ‘variable’ (layer you want to change) with the same text string that’s in your layers + spreadsheet.

Image → Variables → Define

Building Your Data Set

House all variable data in a spreadsheet.

Tip: Always ask for list of player names and information in a spreadsheet. I suggest Google Sheets since it's free.

The columns should align to the names assigned to layers in Photoshop. The rows will define each unique design version.

Tips to know:

[Combine First + Last Name] =CONCAT(B2,” ”,C2)

• Insert your cells in place of B2 and C2

• Double-click the small circle to apply the formula to all cells

Export the spreadsheet file from Google Sheets (or Microsoft Excel) as a .csv file

Importing into Photoshop

Bring your spreadsheet dataset into Photoshop using the built-in import tool. This maps data to the correct variable layers.

Image → Variables → Data Sets → Import

Tip: If you decide to add the file name as the first column, make sure to select the checkbox “Use First Column for Data Sets Name”

Export PSDs

Once your datasets are officially imported, you are now ready to generate your PSDs.

File → Export → Data Sets as Files

The reason we originally create these as PSDs is to make sure we can go back through individually and check if the data processing processed correctly.

Using Adobe Bridge to Generate JPEGs

The most underrated app that many creatives don’t use is Adobe Bridge.

Bridge is an awesome way to quickly see previews of a file and leverage the “Batch Process” functionality with Photoshop to quickly convert PSDs into JPEGs.

Select all your PSDs then go to:

Tools → Photoshop → Image Processor

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Just like that, this entire process took less than 20 minutes total compared to hours of manual work if you tried updating these individually! Learning this fundamentally changed the way I approached building design templates and prioritizing creative requests in order to maximize my work AND personal time!

Let me know what you think. Did this help you as much as it did for me? I highly recommend EVERY CFB recruiting designer learn this workflow to save you time making cool custom graphics or trying new styles out!

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