Bulk Processing in PS

Head in the Clouds

Hi there,

Just a quick question, I know it must be able to be done, but I just can't find how to do it ...

I took a photoshoot entirely in colour, and the people want to have a lot of them in b/w ... how can I just change the whole lot to b&w quickly? Does anyone know of a tute or something that will show me how?

Cheers,

aporia

Use the "Batch" command with a B&W action.

In CS > Bridge: Tools > Photoshop > Batch

This will take you to a menu of options with default actions and any others you already have setup in Photoshop. Choose the menu items you want and a folder to save your JPEGs. Unless you create your own action combining B&W conversion with JPEG conversion, you may have to run the Batch command twice (once for B&W, again for JPEG format).

If you don't have a B&W action, check out ATN Central. There is a whole list of B&W actions there. I have found Danny Raphael's actions to be excellent.

Head in the Clouds

thanks Tom,

I realised that it wasn't called 'bulk processing' but Batch processing and found a tute or two, but I still can't seem to get it to work - it does all the conversions to all the files, but then doesn't save them ... they are all the exactly the same once its finished its 'batch'.....

Does anyone have any ideas about what I am doing wrong?

At this rate I would have been better of opening each file and doing the conversion manually as it has taken me hours to try to figure out what I'm doing wrong ....

bham

Head in the Clouds wrote:

thanks Tom,

I realised that it wasn't called 'bulk processing' but Batch processing and found a tute or two, but I still can't seem to get it to work - it does all the conversions to all the files, but then doesn't save them ... they are all the exactly the same once its finished its 'batch'.....

Does anyone have any ideas about what I am doing wrong?

At this rate I would have been better of opening each file and doing the conversion manually as it has taken me hours to try to figure out what I'm doing wrong ....

If you could do a screen shot like this


To show us what you have in your action, or just type it out that could help us diagnose the problem.

This is an action setup to do a batch of photos for a bw conversion that adds some contrast and saves jpg quality 8.

DavidTO

I would create the action for converting and trigger it through the Image Processor. It will take care of saving the images much easier than incorporating the save into the action.

bham

DavidTO wrote:

I would create the action for converting and trigger it through the Image Processor. It will take care of saving the images much easier than incorporating the save into the action.

Like many things in Photoshop many ways to do it. Not sure it is much easier, I have never had a problem using batch. Also not sure that Head in the Clouds has CS2, which you are assuming HIC has, which I think is the only one with the Image Processor.

My point was to help diagnose the problem we need an idea what the action is that HIC created and what is happening, so we can identify how to help.

Brett Mickelson

Adding save and close to your action makes your action completely unreversible, which is why I find it dangerous.

DavidTO

Brett Mickelson wrote:

Adding save and close to your action makes your action completely unreversible, which is why I find it dangerous.

That's where the beauty of the Image Processor comes in. It makes a new folder and saves the images into there, non-destructively.

Brett Mickelson

DavidTO wrote:

That's where the beauty of the Image Processor comes in. It makes a new folder and saves the images into there, non-destructively.

Precisely.

The thing that pisses me off about IP, however, is that you can't create your own folder...it automatically places it in a folder called "JPEG" (assuming you save as JPEG) inside whatever directory you select.

colourbox

Brett Mickelson wrote:

Adding save and close to your action makes your action completely unreversible, which is why I find it dangerous.

My actions have Save and Close, but...I always record Save actually as "Save As" to a specific output folder that's nowhere near the originals, and I always record "Close" without saving changes (clicking the Don't Save button) so that the original isn't altered by the action.

BinaryFx

bham wrote:

To show us what you have in your action, or just type it out that could help us diagnose the problem.

bham, the screen shot method is a good one.

If you did not know, there is a better way than typing the action steps out manually!

Save it as a text file.

Highlight the action that you wish to save as text in the actions palette. Hold down the cmd/opt or ctrl/alt key and then use the actions palette options memu to select the save action command.

Instead of the regular .atn file, the key modifier combination mentioned above should save the file as a .txt file (which can't be re-read as an action, it is only meant for demonstration and analysis).

A free *very good, but deep* MS Word .doc on Photoshop actions can be found here:

http://www.atncentral.com/ (look for the Photoshop Actions – The Mother of All Tutorials in the tutorials section)
http://www.atncentral.com/Zip_Actions/PhotoshopActions_ver1.1Btoc.zip

Head in the Clouds

ahh... just caught up on this little chin wag ... the whole screen shot thing is beyond my little brain's capacity just now (a lesson to be learnt another day).

I just made an action which desaturated everything and put a 'save as' function in there too (oh first of all I saved ALL the photos to a new folder called b&w) and then I set the automate thing to do its stuff, but as it wouldn't automatically 'save as' I had to hit enter after each auto action, which then saved it in the 'b&w' folder. I just grabbed a wine and sat there hittin the enter key for about 30 minutes! ... I promised myself I'd learn how to do it properly next time!

Thanks heaps for the tips

Oh and yes I think I have CS2 ....