Batch Processing Large Amounts Of Images in Photoshop

Starting Off

First off we want to get all of our images into one folder to set up for batch processing, make a new folder anywhere you like and name it whatever you want, Ill be naming mine “batch” for this tutorial. Copy all of the images that you want to process to this folder (make sure you copy your images, dont use the original, so if you mess up you are able to backtrack). Within that folder make a new folder for your final images, Im going to name mine “final”. Here is what you should see.

Creating the effect

First we are going to create an action that we want to apply to all the images, for this tutorial I am simply going to desaturate them. Open up photoshop, and open one of your images, then open up the actions window (alt + f9 on windows). Create a new action by clicking on the new action button, which looks identical to the create a new layer button on the layers panel, and name it “desaturate”, and then click the record button.

Now go to Image>Adjustments>Hue/Saturation (Ctrl + U) and take the middle slider named “saturation” all the way to the left. Click ok, and then click the button labeled “stop” on the actions panel to stop recording the action. Now close your image without saving it and we will proceed to the next step.

Getting the process started

Now we are going to start the batch processing. Just to clarify, I am going to resize all the images to 400px on the long side, and apply the action we just made to desaturate the image, which will leave me with all my images in black and white and all 400px long in a separate folder. Go to File>Scripts>Image Processor. This is the batch processing window, within it are a few options which I will explain.

The item labeled with the number 1 is the source folder location, which will be the folder that you created with your original images in it. The item labeled 2 which is the folder for your finished images within that folder, mine being named “final”. The third section has options to save as JPG, PSD and TIFF format images, for this tutorial I am going to use JPG at level 12 to keep the best quality of my images.  Resize to fit is the image size manipulator, I am only going to fill in the width with 400 and the length with 266 to keep the image in proportion. And lastly is the Run action selection, from there just check the box and select the action that we just made named “desaturate”.

Now all you have to do is click “run” on the top right hand corner and it will process your images fairly quickly, and when it is done you will have your new folder with images just the way you want them and you will still have all the originals in an unaltered state.  Seeing that all you had to do was copy some files, make a few folders, and create an action, it was pretty damn easy.

In Conclusion

This approach is definitely much faster than the image by image process and can save you tons of time by just using it, and the best part about it is that you can minimize the window and do something else while it is working. I hope you foind this tutorial informative, and if you guys have any questions on how to change any of the variables or do something else specific leave me a comment and Ill be glad to help.

Photo Credits: Nick Asokan from Niche Magazine