'Dynamic' Image Headers

Sure, sifr is probably the way to go. Unless it's not. Or the client says no.

Prerequisite: A text file listing all the headers to be made.

So, first off, I tried ImageMagick. It worked like a charm for OPAQUE gifs. Then stirred in some fancy masking stuff to clear out all white pixels. Now I had very nice 22pt headers. But the small headers looked miserable. 13pt looked just fine, but 12pt looked terrible. And it had to be 12pt. I tried smoothing commands to no avail.

So I decided to create one tall image with all the headers by just pasting the text file into fireworks and saving as png8 with transparency. That way, they *look* perfect. And I wrote a processing script, or "sketch" to create all the headers from the master headerlist-image.

Processing Code Snippet

String[] headlineStrings = {
"HOME",
"ABOUT US",
"ETCETERA",
"THESE ARE NOT THE HEADERS I WAS GIVEN",
"THE LIST WAS 168 HEADERS"
};

int LARGE = 1;
int SMALL = 2;
int usingSize = LARGE;
String mySize = usingSize == LARGE ? "large" : "small";
String prefix = usingSize == LARGE ? "lrg" : "sm";
int myWidth = usingSize == LARGE ? 391 : 213;
int myHeight = usingSize == LARGE ? 16 : 9;
int myOffsetHeight = usingSize == LARGE ? 22 : 12;

PGraphics pg = createGraphics(myWidth, myHeight, JAVA2D);
PImage a = loadImage("c:\\documents and settings\\dennish\\desktop\\columbia headers\\headers-" + mySize + ".png");
//PFont font = loadFont("DispatchCond-Bold-48.vlw");
//PFont font = createFont("DispatchCond-Bold", 12, true);

//String[] fontList = PFont.list();
//println(fontList);

//size(440, 900);
//fill(0);
smooth();

for(int i = 0; i < headlineStrings.length; i++){
    //textFont(font, 12);
    //text(headlineStrings[i], 0, i*12);
    pg.beginDraw();
    pg.background(0,0);
    pg.image(a, 0, 0 - (i * myOffsetHeight)); //12px because the font-size is 12px, and therefore each line of text will occupy 12px vertically.
    pg.endDraw();
    pg.save("c:\\dev\\headlines\\20090317\\hdr-" + prefix + "-" + headlineStrings[i] + ".png");
    pg.dispose();
}

One last problem: these have to be GIFs, and the only way the technique would work so far is by making them PNGs.

So .. back into fireworks for a batch export. Final gotchya: have to click "edit" next to the filetype export selection dropdown, and make sure the GIF has (alpha) transparency enabled.