Photoshop Batch Processing
Posted on 24. Aug, 2008 by david peters in Photography
If you weren't already aware, Photoshop has these great features called Actions. Actions can be used for many things, including doing the mundane tasks you don't feel like doing, creating amazing effects, and maximizing productivity.
I recently had the pleasure of a little thing called Batch Processing. I'm a dedicated designer, but there was no way I was going sit in front of my computer for hours changing the Hue/Saturation for every single image for my forum. What is Batch Processing, you say? Well, it's something that processes a batch,and I'm going to show you how to do it.
When you're creating an action you need it to do one thing: Something. In my case, I needed to change the Hue/Saturation for 75+ images from blue to my "trademark" teal. Maybe you need an action for a different purpose, but humor me and tell yourself, "Hey, I need to make my image the same color as hers!" Next, you'll need something to work on. Get a small image, like an icon, preferably the one I'm using for this tutorial.
Now go to Window > Actions and make sure it is checked. If it is, you should see a tab in the Layers Palette labeled, of course, Actions.
Click on the arrow button to expand the Actions menu and choose "new set." This creates a folder for the action you create (you don't necessarily need the folder, it simply helps with organization.)
Now go back to the Actions menu and choose "New Action." Have an idea of the steps you'll need to take and their order before recording an action. Since this is a fairly simple action, you will master this in no time at all.
All right, here's the fun part: Recording. See that little circle icon in between the square and the triangle at the bottom of the palette? Push it. Now everything you do in Photoshop will be recorded until the end of action. Don't worry, if you screw up, just stop the action by clicking the square icon and go back to your last step.
For this tutorial, the first thing to do is change the Mode of the image to RGB, since .gif files are saved in Index mode which don't respond well to colorization. Go to Image > Mode > RGB with the Action recording.
Next, strip the image of the current color in order to apply our own color easier by going to Image > Adjustment > Desaturate.
You should see a naked grey image and so we need to add some color. Make sure your action is still recording and go to Image > Adjustments > Hue/Saturation. It helps to have the settings for color saved in a .ahu (Hue/Saturation) file so all you have to do is click Load and select Teal.ahu. If you don't have a file saved you can simply use the sliders.
Woo, we've now SunBlinded the icon! All that's left to do now is save it for the web. Is your action still recording? Good. Go to File > Save For The Web and set your file type and optimization settings. I use the standard GIF settings, but whatever floats your boat, dude. Select your destination directory and save. If your Actions palette looks like this:
Stop recording and say "Yay, I made an action!" because you're finished. Now to put your newly born action into... ahem... action, we'll do a Batch Process. What this will do is take all the images in a specified directory and apply whatever changes were recorded in the action. Just for the sake of the tutorial, create a directory and drop some images into it, or just duplicate one that you already have.
Begin by going to File > Automate > Batch and make sure the name of the Action Set you just made is in the first dropdown list and the name of the Action is in the second. Set the third dropdown box (next to Source) to Folder and use the Choose button to find your duplicated or created folder of images. For destination, you can leave it set to it's default "None" to have the action applied and saved in the source folder, or save the "actionized" images into a separate folder. Click OK once you have everything set to your liking..
Now sit back and watch your images color themselves because you're using Actions and Batch Processing to do your dirty work
