Save with Batch

jwashburn · August 22, 2006

I am using CS2 and Adobe Bridge. I shoot a lot of my shots vertical. So now I create a vertical folder and move all my vert shots into that. When I open them in CS2, they automatically show correct and I have them. I am trying to automate this step, so I made an action called save. Then I run that through Bridge. The problem is it prompts me to press Save every photo. Is there a way to automate that?

Brett Mickelson · August 23, 2006

In Bridge, select the photos and go to Tools>Photoshop>Image Processor.

Why would you want to separate them to begin with?

jwashburn · August 23, 2006

Brett Mickelson wrote:

In Bridge, select the photos and go to Tools>Photoshop>Image Processor.

Why would you want to separate them to begin with?

I tried that as well and it sill prompts you to press the save button, maybe I need to record my action differently

bham · August 23, 2006

Can you tell us what you have in the action?

Like this example

Open, BW Conversion, Make Adjustment Layer, Merge Visible, Save, Close

jwashburn · August 24, 2006

bham wrote:

Can you tell us what you have in the action?

Like this example

Open, BW Conversion, Make Adjustment Layer, Merge Visible, Save, Close

I dont have close, maybe thats my problem. My action is literally just Save. It automatically opens the file and rotates it. So I just want to save it now that its rotated. Maybe if I add close to the action it will work

Brett Mickelson · August 24, 2006

You should not have to add save or close to your action.

If all you want to to is rotate your image and save it in a new location, the Image Processor will do that. You will get a screen asking you how you want them saved and what action you want to apply. Once you hit "run," all of your photos will be opened, the action will be run, saved, and closed automatically.

If you have hundreds of prints you want to run an action on, for example, all you have to do is run Image Processor and walk away for a little while.

jwashburn · August 24, 2006

Thats what I thought, buts its not working that way. Ill step through it one more time. Maybe I missed something

bham · August 28, 2006

If you want the action to run with a batch you need to include "open", "save" and "close" if you want the action to run with the image processor you should not have any of these.

I have my batch actions in a seperate grouping from my other actions.

Brett Mickelson · August 29, 2006

bham wrote:

If you want the action to run with a batch you need to include "open", "save" and "close" if you want the action to run with the image processor you should not have any of these.

I have my batch actions in a seperate grouping from my other actions.

That could be misleading. I like to think of it this way:

Do not include save or close in any of your actions. Ever.

If you want to open your images and run an action on them, but leave them open for further adjustment, run a batch.

If you want to open them, run the action, and save/close them all at once, use Image Processor.

Doubling up on actions is too complicated...this is why Image Processor was created.

colourbox · August 29, 2006

I had an action that was always asking me to Save and I think it was because I was opening JPEGs and then there is a step somewhere that results in a file that JPEG can't handle. If you were doing that by hand outside of an action, you would need to save the file as Photoshop, TIFF, etc. and so it would prompt you. That may be happening here too.

If you are exporting to a limited file format like JPEG, step through your action and make sure none of your steps turn the file into something your final format can't handle. A lot of times you can fix the problem by making sure that, before the action step that saves, you add steps that flatten the document and also make it 8-bit RGB. That way, if you feed the action images like CMYK or 16-bit or layered, they get normalized before they hit the Save step for your limited format that cannot handle non-flattened non-8-bit non-RGB images. Also make sure that if you save to a specific folder, that the folder is online and not renamed to something else.

If you started from RAW, for example, they might be converting as 16-bit, which JPEG can't handle. You might need to massage the open step to convert as 8 bit. I learned a lot about this sort of thing from Real World Adobe Camera Raw CS2 which explains some key things about using Raw, Open, and Save in actions.

Hope that ends up helping somehow.

bham · August 29, 2006

Brett Mickelson wrote:

That could be misleading. I like to think of it this way:

Do not include save or close in any of your actions. Ever.

If you want to open your images and run an action on them, but leave them open for further adjustment, run a batch.

If you want to open them, run the action, and save/close them all at once, use Image Processor.

Doubling up on actions is too complicated...this is why Image Processor was created.

Yes that is true with closing or leaving them open. I have never done left them open. If I am only doing it on a few images that would be good. Usually I do batches on hundreds of images together. I guess I got in the thinking how I use it mode.

This maybe why Image Processor was created, but I was trying to give some info for others that may not have a version of Photoshop that has Image Processor.

I haven't double up on actions. I brought them from Photoshop 7 where I created them. They run on both fine. I still use both 7 & CS2. Some of the things I do, I need photoshop NOT to automatically rotate the images, so that and a few other things I still use 7 for.

colourbox · August 29, 2006

Brett Mickelson wrote:

I like to think of it this way:
Do not include save or close in any of your actions. Ever.

I was debating whether to say it or not, but I'll say it. I don't see any problem using Save or Close as long as you keep your originals safe and you're prepared to debug the action as needed, particularly the interaction between a Save step in an action and the Save options in the Batch dialog box. It's unsafe to use Save in an action to save over the original; to be safe, only use Save to save the processed image as a copy to a different folder.

Image Processor doesn't do everything I need, and if I have 200 images to run through the action I'm not going to leave them all open. That consumes a great deal of RAM and slows things down.

I agree that Image Processor should be used whenever possible, but I think it's a mistake to make a blanket claim that Save and Close should never be used. I use them in several actions to my benefit, and that's why they're there.

bham · August 29, 2006

colourbox wrote:

I was debating whether to say it or not, but I'll say it. I don't see any problem using Save or Close as long as you keep your originals safe and you're prepared to debug the action as needed, particularly the interaction between a Save step in an action and the Save options in the Batch dialog box. It's unsafe to use Save in an action to save over the original; to be safe, only use Save to save the processed image as a copy to a different folder.

Image Processor doesn't do everything I need, and if I have 200 images to run through the action I'm not going to leave them all open. That consumes a great deal of RAM and slows things down.

I agree that Image Processor should be used whenever possible, but I think it's a mistake to make a blanket claim that Save and Close should never be used. I use them in several actions to my benefit, and that's why they're there.

Yes with the batch I always save to a different folder. And usually I copy to a second folder and don't take from the originals folders anyway.

I just rarely use Adobe Bridge, and thus rarely use Image Processor.

jwashburn · September 4, 2006

Thanks for all of the help, I had the check box set to open the file before running the process in Bridge

Save with Batch

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