Oh, the myriad photos you can edit with batch processes!
Difficulty Level: Easy
What You Need:
> Photoshop CS3 or CS4 (We used CS4, but there’s no difference as far as this how-to is concerned. Photoshop CS4 is $699 at www.adobe.com, or it comes with any Creative Suite 4 bundle.)
> A bunch of photos in need of an identical editing process
You know the story: After a whirlwind vacation around the world, you have too many photos to color-correct, resize, and publish to the web. Though numerous photo-editing apps can batch-process files with basic tasks, none are as customizable as the Actions feature in Adobe Photoshop.
Actions is perhaps one of the most useful Photoshop features, allowing you to record and automate a customized sequence of commands that can be drawn from most of the app’s image-manipulation tools. These prerecorded macros perform monotonous tasks for you so you can step away while your Mac does the image-editing dirty work. We’ll show you how to record your own actions in Photoshop and help you prep your photos for viewing in less time than it takes to get over your jet lag.
Open an image file in Photoshop. We’re going to use this image to teach Photoshop the individual steps of your new tedium-crushing, super-automated action. Since this image is only going to be used to create the action, it doesn’t need to come from the photo gallery you eventually want to batch-process… but it wouldn’t hurt. Once the photo is open in your workspace, bring up the Actions dialog by choosing Window > Actions or pressing Option-F9.
Our car-show photos needed a lot of readjusting.
The Actions window already contains a folder called Default Actions with some editable examples, but we’ll create our own set instead. First, click the folder button at the bottom of the Actions window to create a new set and name it whatever you’d like. Now click the little Create New Action button to the immediate right of the folder button. The New Action dialog appears--this is where you’ll name your action (we called ours Save As). Next, click Record.
Give your action a name that gives you a clue about what exactly it does.
Once you click Record, Photoshop will start recording whatever you do next, and all the tasks you perform on your image will be added to the action in the order you perform them. So let’s start editing the photo you opened in Step 1. Under the Image menu, choose Auto Tone (CS4 only; skip this if you’re using CS3), then Auto Contrast, and then Auto Color. (In CS3, Auto Contrast and Auto Color are under Image > Adjustments.)
After you’ve finished adjusting your photo, save it in the desired format (File > Save As) to an easy-to-find location, like your Desktop. We suggest a medium-quality JPEG if you’re planning to share your photos on the web. When your photo’s been saved, click the little square Stop button back in the Actions window to stop recording the action.
We auto-toned the heck out of this photo to make the car look shinier.
Your saved action will contain all the tasks you performed on your image. But you can run that action on another photograph later and exclude some of the tasks--for example, if you want to do only Auto Tone and Auto Contrast, but not Auto Color. Just expand the action in the Actions window by clicking the triangle next to its name, and then uncheck the steps you want the action to skip. Any step with a checked box will be performed.
Sometimes, all a photo needs is some Auto Tone.
To perform your new action on a single photo, just open the photo, open the Actions window, select your action in the list, and click the Play button. But you’ll save even more time by unleashing your action as a batch process. Open a large group of files that you want to edit all at once. Now select File > Automate > Batch. Another dialog appears, this time with options for using the actions on a group of photos.
We only used four photos for this batch process, but feel free to use a whole lot more.
In the Batch dialog, under Play, set the Set and Action dropdowns to the action you recorded. Set the Source dropdown to Opened Files to include all the open images in the batch. For Destination, select Folder, and choose a save destination. Photoshop can rename your photos if you like; just fill in the File Naming section. We named our batch “SFAutoShow,” and added a two-digit serial number to each file name, and set the file extension to appear in lowercase.
Now just click OK and watch Photoshop go to work, performing your action on every file you have open. When the work’s complete, open the folder with the newly edited images and admire your hardly-any-effort-required handiwork.
Once you click OK, sit back and watch Photoshop work its magic on your photos.
