Photo Editor: Photo Template Automation

This guide covers advanced visual production workflows within True Anthem leveraging our Photo Editor. It outlines how to establish your Brand Kit, design reusable graphics templates, and leverage automation to eliminate manual production steps.

1. Setting Up Your Brand Kit

Before your team can build or automate templates, you must first establish your brand’s asset repository inside True Anthem. Think of the Brand Kit as a centralized style guide that saves assets directly within the dashboard, eliminating local desktop searches.

Logos and Graphical Assets

• Unlimited Storage: There is no limit to the number of image files you can upload.

• Asset Types: Upload commonly used brand marks, partner logos, watermarks, or decorative background layers (such as transparent .png gradient fades).

• Access: Once uploaded, these assets are globally accessible to your social teams from a dedicated panel inside the editor workspace.

Brand Colors

• Save your organization's exact color palette by inputting hex codes from your brand style guide.

• A built-in eye-dropper color picker tool is also available to sample and save colors on the fly. Saved colors automatically populate color selection menus for text and shapes.

Custom Font Uploads

True Anthem supports both universal system fonts and fully custom typography to ensure your graphics remain on-brand.

• Format Support: You can upload custom typography using standard font files (such as TrueType .ttf or OpenType .otf files).

• Font Families: When uploading a font, you can drag and drop multiple weight files (e.g., Light, Medium, Regular, Bold, Black). They will automatically nest under a single font family group within the editor.

• Tip for Font Agent Users: If your organization uses font management software like Font Agent, simply export or download the raw font files locally to upload them into True Anthem.

2. Creating Custom Templates

Templates act as reusable blueprints. They map static design elements (like logos and layouts) alongside dynamic metadata fields that change with every article.

Defining Layouts and Canvas Sizes

1. Open the Background tab in the canvas toolbar.

2. Select your target aspect ratio based on your destination platform (e.g., selecting a 4:5 aspect ratio for a Feed Portrait template).

3. Position your placeholder background. Built-in snapping alignment guides will appear automatically to help you center and lock elements into place.

Advanced Text Elements & Overlay Settings

Switch to the Overlay tab to control how text blocks behave when dynamic data is injected:

• Dynamic Data Mapping: True Anthem can automatically pull article metadata (such as headlines and descriptions) directly from your URL. By default, layout text blocks will dynamically ingest your article title.

• Line Spacing: Fine-tune the leading or line spacing of text blocks to condense or expand multi-line text blocks.

• Text Anchoring: Anchor your text box blocks to the Top, Middle, or Bottom. Because article headlines vary in length, anchoring ensures that longer text safely expands in a predetermined direction without overlapping logos or background elements.

• Uppercase Control: Toggle this setting to automatically force all injected text into capital letters, ensuring compliance with strict style guides.

• Layering Options: Use standard layering commands to move text blocks, custom shapes, lines, and brand assets forward or backward in the visual stack.

Saving & Overwriting Templates

• To Save a New Template: Click Save as New Template in the bottom right corner. You can create unique templates for specific platforms (e.g., Facebook vs. Instagram) or content categories (e.g., Breaking News vs. Standard News).

• To Update an Existing Template: Make your adjustments, click the chevron icon next to the save button, and select Save Template to overwrite and update the existing file.

3. Automation Capabilities & Roadmap

True Anthem is introducing automation structures designed to completely remove manual graphic creation from your daily publishing workflow

Phase 1: Manual Template Application (Current)

Publishers create their templates once. When scheduling a post, the user manually selects an article, clicks their desired template, and the system automatically pulls the matching background image, maps the headline, and positions the logo. The user then hits apply and schedules.

Phase 2: Template Automation (Private Beta)

True Anthem can map specific templates directly to designated content types.

• How it Works: When content surfaces in your queue, True Anthem automatically applies your chosen template that you set at the content type level. The post arrives in your queue pre-rendered and fully styled.

• Editorial Control: Automation is completely non-destructive. Social editors can still manually open the editor on any automated queue post to tweak a headline, shift a background layout, or swap templates entirely before publishing.

4. Metadata Mapping & Photo Credits

Managing asset attribution is handled through two distinct methods depending on your workflow preferences:

• In-Caption Credits (Current Build): True Anthem maps to your site's operational metadata and automatically appends the photo credit into your post copy.

  • Important Workflow Note: True Anthem’s system reads metadata from the primary image on your webpage. If an editor manually changes the background photo inside the editor overlay to a different scraped image, remember to verify that the caption copy matches the new visual asset.

• On-Image Credits (Upcoming Feature): A new dynamic text mapping caption tool is being introduced. This allows you to place a small text overlay block permanently into your design template that reads photo credit metadata, stamping the credit directly onto the graphic layout for a cleaner caption look.

Next Steps

Once you have been added to the beta, all you need to do is use the feature and tell us what you think! Does it work the way you expect? What else were you imagining it would do?

The #1 goal of a private beta is to collect feedback to further strengthen photo template automation. 

Please send us your questions, comments and feedback early and often by emailing support@trueanthem.com.