A number of items of data from a data source (12) can be processed and deposited in a data destination (16-17). The data can be image data, text data, numeric data or some other type of data, or a combination of these types of data. The processing of the data is controlled by a project definition (14, 71, 101), which includes a plurality of modules selected from a variety of available modules (Table 1-4). The modules have input and output ports which interrelated by binding information. During creation of the project definition, a data preview (691-692) is presented to show how sample data would be affected by the current settings of parameters which affect operation of that module.