Importing Portraits
Before you may use automation tools to create portrait pages, import your school’s portrait package into Memento Yearbook. The portrait manager associates information about the people in your school to their portraits – their names, the groups they belong to, and their priority ranking. This information is used to create customizable portrait grids across multiple pages of your yearbook in a few easy clicks.
Note that only Editors/Editor-in-Chief may import and manage portraits as the book must be checked out during this process.
Importing with a Database Package
The following video demonstrates how to import a PSPA-format database into Memento. (See below for full information on this format.)
What is the PSPA Format?
Most photo studios use a portrait package known as the PSPA (Professional School Photographers Association) format. The package consists of one or more folders containing portrait images, and a data file saved as Index.txt. Portraits are sized to 640×800 (recommended), in a common aspect ratio, saved as JPG in an RGB color profile. File names only contain alphanumeric characters.
The Index.txt data file contains information about the people in the photo – one row per person, arranged in a particular column order.
If there are issues with importing this data into Memento Yearbook, the text file may be opened in a notepad or in a spreadsheet application (such as Excel) to verify the format and information within it. See below for portrait import troubleshooting tips.
The PSPA format assigns one row per person/photo. The columns contain data in a particular order, as listed below. The categories in orange are required to import and build pages in your yearbook; those in green are very useful, particularly for elementary school books.
A. Volume Name: a client name for your school, or a default field, eg. “Yearbook”
B. Image Folder: the name(s) of the folder(s) containing your images
C. Image File Name (including file extension): file names given to the portrait photos, usually a .jpg
D. Grade: Assigned to students and possibly their homeroom teachers.
E. Last Name: Family name of the person in the portrait.
F. First Name: Given name of the person in the portrait.
G. Homeroom: Number/designation for students’ classroom (elementary schools.)
H. Period: Special designation for some schools, not usually used.
I. Teacher Name: Homeroom teacher’s name (usually last name only – for elementary schools.)
J. Track: Special designation for some schools, not usually used.
1- Open the Portrait Manager
Click on Manage Portraits on the left-side menu of the book manager.
Check out the yearbook.
2- Import the Database File
Click on Import People on the portrait manager menu.
Click Upload PSPA Index.
Navigate to your portrait package, then locate the index.txt file, which is usually located next to the folders holding the portrait images.
Select the index.txt file, then Open the the file to upload it.
Review the data table, scrolling over to the right to see all columns.
Check to make sure the column headers match the data underneath them (eg. Grade information is not in the Last Name column) or if there are any warnings over the table.
If the data in a column is mismatched to the label above it, click on the V on the column header to reassign the category.
Each category may only be used once.
If a column contains unnecessary information (eg. random codes), set the column to be ignored. This reduces clutter in your database.
If all important data is present – file names, first & last names, grade, etc. – and the column headers match the data beneath them, then click Import People on the top menu.
The data import is now complete.
3- Import the Portrait Photos
After importing your database, a warning will appear to remind you to associate photos to your database.
Click on Import Photos to get started.
Click on the upload icon to navigate to the folder(s) on your computer where the portrait photos are located.
Select all images (Ctrl-A on Windows, Cmd-A on Mac) to add all files within a folder at once.
You may also drag the photos (one folder at a time, if applicable) to the upload icon.
The portrait photos will begin uploading immediately, attaching themselves the people listed in the database.
4- Corrections & Additions
Once the import is complete, you may make corrections in the database (eg. fix typos, reassign people to different groups), import another index (eg. retakes, senior photos), assign roles to staff, or create portrait pages in your yearbook.
More information on editing portrait data is available in the Managing Portrait Data article.
Importing Portraits Without a Database
If your portrait photographer has only provided portrait photos without a database, or you wish to include photos for people who missed photo day (homemade portraits or placeholder images), you can import these into your portrait manager.
After uploading the photos to the portrait manager, complete the information describing the portraits in the data table – their names, grades, teacher/homeroom, etc. If you are adding retake or extra photos to an existing import, be sure to match the formatting of the portraits already in the database. Consult the Managing Portrait Data article to learn how to add/edit data in the portrait manager.
1- Open the Portrait Manager
Click on Manage Portraits on the left-side menu of the book manager.
Check out the yearbook.
2- Import Photos
Click on Import Photos on the portrait manager menu.
Click on the upload icon to navigate to the folder(s) on your computer where the portrait photos are located.
Select all images (Ctrl-A on Windows, Cmd-A on Mac) to add all files within a folder at once.
You may also drag the photos (one folder at a time, if applicable) to the upload icon.
The images will upload quickly.
Note that the images are not associated to a name in the database, and only shown as “new person.”
3-Add the Missing Data
After the upload has completed, the portrait manager will display a warning about portraits that are missing critical information.
Use the smart filter to show only the portraits missing their first or last names. Add the missing names to each portrait. Group information (grade, homeroom, teacher, etc) may be added to multiple portraits at once.
More information on editing portrait data is available in the Managing Portrait Data article.
Troubleshooting Import Issues
Below are some common errors when importing a portrait database package and suggested solutions.
The index file is not a TXT format.
Memento Yearbook will only import a .txt file. If you’ve received a .csv file format, simply rename it to a .txt and will import without issue. Other formats may require you to import them into Excel or another spreadsheet application, and then resave them to a .txt format.
The database is missing important information.
If your database simply looks wrong when you import it into Memento – full of random alphanumeric codes, missing file names, etc. – your photographer may have given you the wrong portrait package format.
To verify the format, open the index file in a spreadsheet software, like Excel, or a notepad application. Look for extra columns, data that appears as random alphanumeric codes, or missing critical information such as filenames, grades or names. Please contact your photo studio to ask for a PSPA-format database should these problems be discovered.
The database includes extra “garbage” information.
If most of the data appears correct at import, but there is one or more columns of extra data that simply isn’t useful, set these column headers to “Ignore column.” This will exclude this information from importing into your database.
“Maximum allowable characters” error at import.
If your database contains more that 100 characters in any column, the import will fail. This excludes any field under the Notes column, which may contain 255 characters. (Notes may not be used in labels, so usually this information is not particularly useful.)
The Index.txt file has too many columns.
Occasionally a photographer will provide a portrait database package that is not PSPA format, but it will contain all the information needed to create portrait pages. The other information is simply not required to build your yearbook pages. However, if the data table contains more than thirteen columns, an error will occur at import.
To fix this issue, open the data file in a spreadsheet software, then delete the extra columns, keeping only the essential info (file name, first & last name, grade, homeroom, teacher, salutation, job title). Resave the datafile as a TXT format, using Save As… under a new file name to avoid overwriting the original file (eg. INDEXrevised.txt).
Import this new index file into Memento,to get only the information you need into the portrait manager.
Missing images at import.
If there are problems with importing the portrait images to accompany your database, check the Index file in a spreadsheet software or notepad application.
First, compare the actual file names of the portraits listed in the index file versus the actual portrait names. The file names in the data table must exactly match the actual names of the portrait files. Check the index file for missing zeros starting the file name, typos or extra spaces, and ensure that the file name include the JPG extension. You may be able to manually correct the file names, but if the issue is serious, ask your photographer for a new PSPA format table, explaining in details what is wrong with the package you received.
If there are just a few missing photos, check to make sure the images were actually included in the portrait package. Ask your photographer for these missing images – they may be added to the portrait manager record directly without need to reimport.