I have made a PS action but now need to make it run on auto..any ideas ?

gus

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Aloner

I'm no expert, but what I think you're wanting to do is a batch. This artical here... http://graphicssoft.about.com/od/digitalphotography/l/blps_batch.htm explains how to do it. That link is for an older version of photoshop but I believe it would work with newer versions too. All you need to do is have your source folder the one with all your shots you want to process and create a destination folder. You don't need to have all your files open at once.

Hope this helped

gus

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Richard

Humungus wrote:

Thanks aloner...i will have a read now. I got to a very similar page as that one. Your search looks better though

Gus, you could also consider creating a droplet from your action. It's on the File->Automate menu. If nothing changes except the pics you are running the action on, it's slightly more convenient. You can just drag and drop a folder of pics on the droplet icon and everything is automatic from there.

Cheers,

gus

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jfriend

You could use Image Processor in CS2

Humungus wrote:

Ta mate...was wondering about that. I am all over this like a rash on a bum. I am creating actions & doing automated folder sizing...its a matter of absoluetly having to learn it with shooting 1000 every few weeks of that downhill bike series. I was doing sizing etc of each photo by hand.

If what your action is doing is resizing your photos and you have CS2, you can just go to bridge, select the photos you want to resize and then use the Image Processor script to do everything for you. Here are the steps:

• Select the images you want to resize in Bridge
• Go to the Bridge menu and select Tools/Photoshop/Image Processor
• This will fire up Photoshop CS2 (if it isn't already running) and a dialog will pop up
• In that dialog select a directory location for the resized files
• Select whether you want PSD, JPEG or TIFF files
• Select the size images you want
• Select JPEG quality level (if you chose JPEG images)
• Select any other action you may have created to run on the file after resizing it but before saving it (you can make a simple action that does smart sharpen if you want, for example).
• Add any copyright info you want to add to the EXIF
• Hit "Run" and it will go

mercphoto

Humungus wrote:

I have made an action & have the 400 shots opened (max it allows at once) & i am having to start the action manually for each of the 400 shots that are cascaded on the screen.

Can i do something to automate it so i can walk away & it will do them all in its own time without me activating it for each shot ?

You can automate actions using File Browser or Bridge, whichever the case may be. But you know Adobe sure could have made that task easier. You would think all you would need to do is record an action with the steps you want done, but no. You have to record it differently based on how you intend to use the action in batch mode. I find this a frustrating user interface issue.

For example, suppose you want to batch process some RAW files by applying a given USM setting to each. One would think you simpy record an action to do a USM. Then select all the RAW images in Bridge and batch. But this doesn't work. Your first step in the action must be a file-open command. This is what gets the RAW processor to open in the first place. Then, counter-intuitively, in the batch dialog you have to tell it to ignore the file-open command you just recorded.

How strange is that?

So now you also want to save your image that you just manipulated with your action? In the batch dialog is an option on what to do with the image when done. You can leave it open, you can save it back on itself, or you can save to a new directory with a new name. Lovely right? Except that to use that third and most useful option you have to record your action differently, again. The last step should be a Save-As (not a Save). Select the file format and options and you're done. Then, in the batch dialog you again have to tell it to ignore the save commands. Strange way to do things.

Batching in File Browser or Bridge is very nice but its also very clumsy and easy to get the small details wrong.

DavidTO

Gus,

Haven't we been through this before? Maybe not. You'll want to use The Image Processor, available through PS or Bridge.

mercphoto

DavidTO wrote:

Gus,

Haven't we been through this before? Maybe not. You'll want to use The Image Processor, available through PS or Bridge.

Very cool. Question about "resize to fit". What if you have a mix of landscape and portrait, but you want 400x600 (or 600x400) images? Do you "resize to fit" 600 by 600 (i.e. those are the max values any given dimension can be), or do you resize to fit 400x600 and Photoshop is smart enough to change width for height when necessary?

DavidTO

mercphoto wrote:

Very cool. Question about "resize to fit". What if you have a mix of landscape and portrait, but you want 400x600 (or 600x400) images? Do you "resize to fit" 600 by 600 (i.e. those are the max values any given dimension can be), or do you resize to fit 400x600 and Photoshop is smart enough to change width for height when necessary?

I'm no expert, and I rarely do that, but I *think* that's how it works. Test it, and let us know!

jfriend

Two passes of Image Processor

mercphoto wrote:

Very cool. Question about "resize to fit". What if you have a mix of landscape and portrait, but you want 400x600 (or 600x400) images? Do you "resize to fit" 600 by 600 (i.e. those are the max values any given dimension can be), or do you resize to fit 400x600 and Photoshop is smart enough to change width for height when necessary?

Unfortunately, the Image Processor script is not smart enough to do the smart thing with orientation. The simplest way to work-around this that I know of is to just do two runs of the Image Processor, one with the portrait orientation files selected and a separate one with the landscape orientation files selected.

To test this out, I just selected two images, one portrait and one landscape, set the Image processor size to 800w x 600h. The landscape image came out 800 wide and 532 high (as expected), the portrait image came out 600 high and 399 wide, not 800 high.

I can't find an easy way to sort pictures by orientation in Bridge. It seems like something it should be able to do, but I can't find it. You can sort by the width of an image in Windows Explorer which will get you a sort by orientation if you haven't done any major cropping. That would allow you to copy all the portraits into one directory and the landscapes into another directory, then allowing you to select them easily in Bridge prior to running the Image Processor.

It's probably only a couple lines of code to "fix" the Image Processor script to be smart about orientation and I thought about doing that at one time, but haven't had the time.

DavidTO

What if you set it to 800x800?

Or 600x600?

Or whatever?

mr peas

This is what I use for when I have hundreds of photos to process:



He handles all my hard post processing work.

jfriend

800 x 800 works

DavidTO wrote:

What if you set it to 800x800?

Or 600x600?

Or whatever?

Bingo. Set the image processor to 800x800 and it works. You get both landscape and portrait pics with a max dimension of 800 pixels. Great suggestion.

mr peas

For when I have to resize images, I have two buttons for them. One for vertical photos and horizontal. But you can keep 800px for whatever side, but one will end up 800x600 and the other 800x1067. They wont be the same size one being larger than the other. 400 images with two buttons ready isnt too bad, just grab a cup of coffee and go though each photo until theyre all resized. OR.. record the action for all 400 images, manually or by button-action, then next time you have to do it, just use the one you recently recorded and it will do it for 400 times or until you run out of images.