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Batch processing is an excellent way to save time when you need to apply the same tasks and commands to a group of files. You can run an action on a group of images that are contained in a folder on your hard drive, or from selected files in the File Browser. Here’s how it works:
From the File Browser, select the images you want to process by command-clicking (Mac) or control-clicking (Win) on their thumbnails. If you have a group of thumbnails that are contiguous to each other (i.e., like a row of images), you can click on one and then shift-click on the thumbnail at the end of the row to select them all. From the File Browser’s Automate menu, choose Batch.
If you want to select a specific folder on your hard drive,
choose File>Automate>Batch.
The Batch processing dialog.
The Batch dialog is divided into four parts: Play, Source, Destination, and Errors. In the top section (Play), you tell Photoshop which Action you want to use. If you had the action highlighted in the Actions palette before you brought up this dialog, then it will already be selected for you.
In the Source section, you specify which images you want to process with the action. You can choose from a folder, opened images, imported images, or selected files from the File Browser. This section also contains four options that control how the actions behave regarding open commands in the action itself, images in subfolders, file open dialogs, and color profile warnings. I generally choose to suppress both file open options dialogs and color profile warnings if I am running a batch on a large group of images. If these are left unchecked, then you have to sit at the computer and click on an option every time a file opens up (not exactly the kind of hands-free, time-saving experience you were looking for, I imagine). I should note that before I run actions on large groups of images, I have usually already resolved any conflicting color profile issues, which is why turning off the color profile warnings at this point is not a big issue for me. We cover dealing with ICC color profiles in images in great detail in our book, Real World Digital Photography.
In the Destination section, you tell Photoshop where to place the files once the action is completed. The three choices are None, which means “just leave them open and sitting on my desktop” (unless you want to immediately check the files and will be saving them as a duplicate files yourself, this is generally not a good idea, especially if you’re dealing with lots of files); Save and Close (also not one of my favorites, because it overwrites the original file); and saving a copy of the images into a new Folder. I use this last option 99% of time because it preserves my original images in case there was a problem with the way the action affected the files.
Finally, in the very last section, Errors, you can control how the program behaves if it runs into any errors while the batch operation is in progress.
Copyright 2003, 2004 by Katrin Eismann, Seán Duggan Tim Grey. All Rights Reserved
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