Batch Processing with Photoshop
If you are not quite familiar with Photoshop, this program has these wonderful little features called Actions. These Actions have many different uses from creating remarkable effects to maximizing your productivity and of course they can always be counted on to handle the common and tiresome tasks that are nothing more than time consuming.
I only just discovered the wonder of Batch Processing. I’m dedicated and detail oriented, but sitting in front of the computer adjusting the Hue/Saturation for the countless number of photos taken at my son’s first birthday was simply out of the question. I did find a more than happy solution in Batch Processing.
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 that it is checked. If it is, you should see a tab in the Layers Palette labeled Actions.
Click on the arrow button to open the Actions menu and go to “new Set.” This will create a folder for your action (you don’t really need the folder, it just 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.
There will be a naked grey image left to which we need to add some color. While still recording your action, go to Image > Adjustments > Hue/Saturation. I keep the rose color settings saved in a .ahu (Hue/Saturation) file already so all I have to do is press Load and select Rose.ahu, but you can achieve this color by using the sliders.
Our final step is to save it for the web. Make sure your action still recording and go to File > Save For the Web and set your file type and optimization settings. I use the standard GIF settings. Select your destination directory and save.
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..
The hard part of the job is now done for you! All that is left is to relax and watch your pictures color themselves thanks to Actions and Batch Processing.
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