Preserved Topic: Batch File Alterations

Part of my job at the school I work at is to maintain the student and staff records in the library. As such, and since the school photos have recently been taken, I have recieved a CD full of student and staff photos too amend to the records, so that when they come into the library we can immediatley see if they are who they say they are. Now, all these photos are the same size and all of them are the same file format.

Unfortunatley all of the them are exactly the wrong size and exactly the wrong file format.

Is there a way that I can perform a batch file alteration to resize them and chage their file format?

Koan 63, written on the wall of cell number 250:
Those who Believe
Can
Those who Try
Do
Those who Love
Live

Photoshop 6 Batch will take all the images in a folder and run an Action on them and plop them into another folder.

I am pretty sure you could change size and file kind with an Action.

                                                           

Izzay is right: record an action with a sample image (open one of the wrong images, record the action but do not save) the make a batch proccess to apply the same action to all image. In the batch proccess you can choos if overwrite the images or save them in a different folder....

Under 'file/automate ... you'll find 'Web photo gallery' ps6.0 which just may do the trick. All you're interested in... is the finished product which in this case would be the folder where all the resized images reside. You can also change the output settings in there to pretty much whatever you want.
Krets knows more about this as does Steve... topic came up a while back.

Skaarjj:
Anything you can do to an image from menu selections can be added to an action. You can't save painting strokes and you can't crop different images in different places, but otherwise - if you have a mess of photos that all need to have *exactly* the same thing done to them, that's an ideal candidate for a batch.

I would disagree with Wakkos - you DO want to save the image you use to record the action, because that's the only way I know of to change the file type.

Assuming your originals are coming from the CD (not a folder on your computer), do this:
Create a new folder called "ProcessedImages" or some such.

Open one of the images from the CD in Photoshop.
Open the Actions window in Photoshop.
From the fly-out menu (triangle top right) select New Action
(probably no point in assigning it a function key, but that feature is cool)
Name it, and start the recording process.
Start doing what you need to to the photo - Probably just Image>Adjust>Image Size
Save-As: select your ProcessedImages folder as the destination, and whatever you want for the file type.
Stop recording the Action. Now it appears in the list of actions.

Throw away the image you just saved to the Processed Images folder so Photoshop doesn't hiccup when it does the real batch.

then:
File>Automate>Batch.
There are some variations based on which version you use, but basically you tell Photoshop
- What action to run - your new one will proabably already be selected
- What folder to take the images from (the CD probably)
- okay to go into sub-folders or not?
- What folder to put the finished images into
- ignore the folder defined by the action? (in this case it won't matter, but if you save this action and use it months from now, the ProcessedImages folder might not exist any more. This allows you to use the action but specify a new destination - very useful)

- That's mostly it. PS6 and 7 allow you to re-name the files as you go too - sometimes hugely useful, sometimes not.

Tell it to go, and walk away (unless you like sort of slow slide shows).

Actions make my life at work bearable. You should get to know this feature - it's an enormoust time saver if you have to do the same thing over and over. Our Nikon digital cameras save all files in landscape mode. We shoot a lot of portraits. We also like to give clients high and low res versions. We have actions to rotate the images and to resize them. It makes a BIG difference when someone comes back from an assignment with 60-100 images.

(It's still important to have a stick to whack them with if they hold the camera one way for some people, and another way for others. It happens!)

Good luck. Make friends with actions and batching.

Steve is right too: Save the image if you are changing the image type.
(at least the sample one) I normally make a copy of one of the image to make the changes and all that, then I aply all the batch to a given folder.

Added this to the FAQ's. http://faq.ozoneasylum.com/FaqWiki/shownode.php?id=715&sortby=rating

If I haven't done it correctly (very real possibility)<bg> would someone who *does* know... show me where I've gone wrong.

Anyway.... this topic has come up a few times and I thought it should go in the FAQ's.



[This message has been edited by NoJive (edited 07-25-2002).]

NJ: Technically it looks fine - a link to this thread (and any other relevant ones might be quite cool). However, TP and I decided that we wouldn't add other people's content from Asylum threads) if we didn't have their express permission so I personally would have checked if that was OK with Steve but that isn't any kind of rule we just decided that it would help avoid any misunderstandings that could arise.

We've also started this node so people can give us permission once to speed things up:
http://faq.ozoneasylum.com/670/

Which reminds me that the cleaner URL is:
http://faq.ozoneasylum.com/715/

[PS: You weren't wrong about this topic coming up all the time ]

___________________
Emps

FAQs: Emperor

God, that FAQ paints me as an action/batch evangelist!
Well okay, I can live with that.


I can see the point of caution regarding quoting other people in the FAQ, but, speaking for myself only, my feeling is that factual information posted in a public forum is fair game, and anything that might be embarrassing later probably isn't interesting enough to add to a FAQ anyway.

Good for you for stashing it in the wiki, NoJive!

Skaarjj - did you get it to work?

Steve: I thought that was funny when I started digging around for old threads on this subject.

You are probably right (as always) about asking permission but we thought this approach would be the best idea (esp. if we are transfering a lot of written content and graphics into the FAQ). We'll see how it works out and as you say top marks to NJ for spotting the need for this and taking the initiative (if we had more like him then the FAQ would be even more awesome than it already is ). It might also mean you won't have to repeat the info quite so often

___________________
Emps

FAQs: Emperor