Multiple Edits

[Guest Michelle Davies]

I have read where others will do batch processinig/editing...how do I do this? I am the crosscountry photographer and don't want to have to go in and edit hundreds of photos....how do I do a group thing?

Thanks!

Michelle

[Laurel Lakey]

I believe this is how you do it. (I use CS2, but I'm pretty sure it works for other versions as well.)

First, you need to create a new action using whatever edit process you want to do to your photos. (Let's pretend you want to desaturate a bunch of photos at once.) Open a sample photo to desaturate. Then go to your Actions tab, click on the triangle flyout button, and choose New Action. Give your action a name and click Record. Then edit your photo like you want all of them to be edited. (For desaturation example, you'd go to Image>Adjustments>Desaturate.) Once you're done editing, go to your Actions tab again and click on the Stop button at the bottom of the Actions tab. Now you have an action that will automatically desaturate (or edit however you want). You can use this action individually, or batch edit. That's the next step...

Once you have recorded an action that you want to apply to a folder of files, in Photoshop go to File>Automate>Batch. Find your set of actions in the Set menu (probably located under Default Set if you didn't create a new set), then find the action that you recorded earlier. (It will be called whatever you named it when you recorded it.) Choose your source, which can be a folder of images, or all of the images you currently have open in Photoshop, or you can import them. (I usually just use a folder of images, especially if they're all from the same time period and have the same lighting conditions, etc.) Then choose your folder (or skip the choosing part if you're using the import or the open files source). Next you have the option of what to do with the files once you apply your batch edit to them. You can either choose Destination: None and the images will stay open in Photoshop after being edited, or choose Destination: Save and Close, and the images will be saved in the same file that you pulled from. (This I wouldn't recommend if you're working on original files because you will have altered the image and have no way of getting the original back.) Or you can choose Destination: Folder and save the images in another folder, thus essentially making a copy of the files with the edit applied to them. If you choose the Folder destination, you also have the option of renaming the files as they're saved, similar to the Batch Rename process. Last, you can choose to have Photoshop stop for errors or just log them. If you choose to stop, then the process will halt if there is an error and let you know what it is and give you options to either correct it or skip it.

Once you click OK the batch process will start. The whole thing is automated, so you just have to sit back and watch it go!

I hope this helps you and I hope it's along the lines of what you were looking for. Happy scrapping!