Bulk Editing - Your advice.

SealBeard

SealBeard

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Name
Rob
Edit My Images
No
Evening all,

I'v been doing a few bits and pieces lately that have landed me with 300-400 images to edit. Often images only need a bit of contrast, sharpening and a white balance tweak.

I was wondering if its possible to do some kind of batch process that would do some standard changes to a load of images at a time?

Is this possible? or should I just be old fashion and go through one by one...

Advice on programs etc would be really helpful

Cheers,
Rob
 
What software do you have? I would recomend Adobe Lightroom, it's designed for batch ajusting the basics like exposure colour adding sharpening etc and is quick and easy, you can do it in Photoshop with actions, but it's not as simple, and you can't easily "tweek" one of the images if it's different. That said it's got a lot more features for more much more advanced editing (swopping heads etc)
 
I prefer to use Lightroom for my editing, which offers a variety of ways to apply multiple adjustments to multiple images.

Even with DPP (free with your camera) you can easily edit a batch of images simultaneously or copy and paste adjustment "recipes" between images. However, the power and flexibility offered by DPP is no match for Lightroom. Still, if DPP does what you need it to then that's good enough.

If this is a one off, and you don't want to buy Lightroom, you can always download a 30 day trial.
 
Thanks for the advice guys, I have both Lightroom 2 and Photoshop CS4 - I do tend to use PS for most of my individual stuff because I feel more comfortable in my understanding of the program. Lightroom annoyed me slightly because of the whole having to exporting too save thing?... or am I missing something?

But if you both recommend it I will certainly have a read up and give it a go :)
 
I think the "problem" of "exporting" is a mindset thing. If you make changes to a file then those changes have to be saved somehow. Whether you call that process "saving" a file or "exporting" a file seems to me to be one of semantics, no more. The beauty of Lightroom is that it is 100% non destructive editing. You can revisit a file as often as you like, making and undoing changes freely. There is never a risk to the original copy, whether it's raw or JPEG. Obviously there comes a point when you are ready to produce your final edited/resized/converted image. That's when you export from Lightroom. It is a batch process that is, quite frankly, effortless. Hit the button and leave it going for a couple of minutes.

To me that is a far more appealing way of working than Photoshop and its tedious and convoluted save process for each file. Sh!t, in Photoshop you can't even edit in a 16 bit workspace and save to JPEG without first switching to an 8 bit environment. Seems kind of nuts to me. I dislike Photoshop; a lot. Maybe it's because I have never really got to grips with it, but I don't have the inclination to try.
 
In Bridge select a number of images taken in the same lighting etc that all need similar adjustments (usually 4 or 5 images at a time). Select all of these images and then select "open in CS4".

Now edit the first image how you want. When done press the "sychronise" tab so that all the other images in this selction receive the same adjustments.

Works for me (although I still spend FAR too much time editing imo).

HTH
 
I actually think there is a place for using both lightrooms and photoshop - I've listed my workflow below.

Shoot RAW

Lightroom for whitebalance, exposure tweaks, colour cast issues etc (if you adjust the first image, select that image on it's own along the bottom and then select the other images and click the sync button - it goes away and does all the other photos with the settings from the first)

Then export as JPEG

Save RAW files as an individual Catalogue under the project name/number

JPegs into photoshop where I have created an action with standard sharpening, vignetting, presentation border and then saves and closes the image - I can leave it running whilst doing something else or over night - I have found the save and close part of the action is important because you can the odd time get a crash so you don't lose the images already procecssed!!!! The action also saves to a generic processed pictures folder on my computer so I always have the orginal file!!!!

I then reload these images into photoshop and do individual tweaks such as cloning, skin, eyes, etc.

Final save where I over write the original JPEG export from Lightroom.

Creating actions is quite easy and there are plenty of tutorials around for doing this
 
Well DPP allows you to batch process AND apply various settings to your pics - just "select all" then left click on "tool pallette" and apply the changes you want then save them as TIFF files etc.
 
looks like I'm actually spoiled for choice! I will have to have a play with each thing you have mentioned and see what sits best we me - thanks very much for you advice guys :)
 
With Lightroom you only need to export if you want to do something with the image, all the changes you have made are saved within Lightroom, so there is no need to save intermediate files, or various sizes. Just export, email/upload/print then delete.
 
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