How to: Fast "Batch" file adjustments

[brice618]

I thought I would make a little PS tutorial for those who deal with a lot of files when making TR's that need to be adjusted. This works great when you are using a general adjustment like auto levels. Also resizing becomes a breeze.


Ok there are several ways to do this, but this is the way I like best...


1. Open up all of the files you are wanting to adjust.



2. Look next to the history tab and click "actions". Then Click the Folder on the bottom of that menu to create a new set of actions. In this case I called it "MyActions"



3. Now click the "New action" button next to the button you clicked to create a new set. Name the action whatever you want, I chose "adjustments". Then choose which action set you want to keep it in. I chose the one I just created. Now click "Record".



4. Now Photoshop will be recording you actions. So, go ahead and make the adjustments you want to make to the first image of your group. For this example I did : Levels, Image Size, Save, and then Close. Once you do those actions to the first image go ahead and click the "stop" button on the actions menu.



5. Now that you completed on image we'll let photoshop do the rest of them. You just created an action to make on an image and photoshop included a "batch" command to do the work for you. Go ahead and click file then mouse over the "Automate" menu and choose "Batch".



6. Almost done, choose the set and action that you want to "batch". Then since you have all of the files open go ahead and choose "Opened files" for the source. You can also choose to do it on a folder full of files to not have to worry about opening them. In this case don't worry about the destination as we already took care of it with the "save" and "close" command in our action.




Click "Ok" and watch the files adjust themselves! Use your imagination and you can make this do a lot of things for you!

[Mountainman]

Sweet! Always wondered how that worked. Thanks for putting the time into the tutorial.

[brice618]

No problem, I wouldn't mind doing more of them if there is interest.

[Fuzz]

One cool thing is that you after recording an action, you can choose to skip over some steps if you want. You can toggle the checkbox next to each action to either include or exclude it when you run the "macro". For instance, I have an action to do Auto Levels, make a Shadows/Highlights adjustment, and apply a Curves adjustments. But sometimes I don't want to apply the generic Auto Levels, so I'll uncheck that action.

Similarly, right next to the check-box, there's another box that tells Photoshop whether to give the user control of the dialog box for each action. So if you check that dialog box-box, the macro will pause on the dialog box for that action and wait for user input. Not useful for large batch adjustments, but can be useful if you're working on a handful of images, but want to tweak a particular adjustment separately for each image.

[Ripzalot]

nice. for us total amateurs tho, IrfanView has a nice batch mode. i mostly just resize and sharpen a tad. maybe a little gamma correction if it was an exceptionally bright day.

http://www.irfanview.com/

open IrfanView
press "B" to open the batch mode window
select/add your files to the left pane
set the output directory folder
Output format: JPEG


Options / Save quality: 90%


Click use Advanced options
Click Set advanced options
Set resize options
Set sharpen, gamma correction and any other adjustments you need


Press Start and let 'er rip...