Photoshop Cs Question

[Jase71]

I'm in the process of culling & editing photographs from a recent holiday, and have almost a hundred frames (froma pool of about four hundred) that I have resized. I'm now going through the process of balancing the colours, contract etc, and when I am done with each, I am applying a series of borders to give them that extra professional 'edge'

But it's a big bloody task, and being that the same rules will apply over each & every photo, I wonder if there's a way to bulk-edit them so that my framed borders can be applied across the entire collection. What I am doing is as follows:

Original photo of 450x600
Edit Canvas Size by adding 2px to width & height (Black)
Edit Canvas Size by adding 10px to width & height (grey, 165 165 165 RGB)
Edit Canvas Size by adding 30px to height (grey, 165 165 165, top anchored)
Edit Canvas SIze by adding 2px to width & height (black)

It would be GREAT if I could apply this to all of them at once. Is this possible ?

FYI the outcome is to look like the attached pic (and no, that's not me, but a good mate of mine). The grey space at the bottom is for captions.

 

[Ducatiboy stu]

GIMP


Google it

Works even better in Linux

 

[buttersd70]

I'm in the process of culling & editing photographs from a recent holiday, and have almost a hundred frames (froma pool of about four hundred) that I have resized. I'm now going through the process of balancing the colours, contract etc, and when I am done with each, I am applying a series of borders to give them that extra professional 'edge'

But it's a big bloody task, and being that the same rules will apply over each & every photo, I wonder if there's a way to bulk-edit them so that my framed borders can be applied across the entire collection. What I am doing is as follows:

Original photo of 450x600
Edit Canvas Size by adding 2px to width & height (Black)
Edit Canvas Size by adding 10px to width & height (grey, 165 165 165 RGB)
Edit Canvas Size by adding 30px to height (grey, 165 165 165, top anchored)
Edit Canvas SIze by adding 2px to width & height (black)

It would be GREAT if I could apply this to all of them at once. Is this possible ?

FYI the outcome is to look like the attached pic (and no, that's not me, but a good mate of mine). The grey space at the bottom is for captions.

View attachment 25932

Jase,
all you should need to do is start with one photo. Over in the actions palatte, start a new action. Go through all the steps involved, and then click stop. Then, go to file, automate, batch.
select your action and your source
set destination 'folder', and choose the folder
change the file naming to "document name" in the first field, "_whateveryouwanttocallittomakeitdifferentfromtheoriginal" for the second field ( ), and extension for the 3rd field.

It's good (non destructive) practice to change the name of the file and save to a different location during the edit.

Suggest that to start, copy the first 5 or so pics to a new folder, and run the action to make sure it's all OK before trusting it to all hundred. After you check them, then just run the automate on the actual folder......the aim of the game is to get the edit done without overwriting the original files....that is best done manually afterwards (cos 'puters tend to have end user issues sometimes....better to do it manually after you've checked. I once lost 200 shots from a job, right at the end, cos I stuffed an action....had to go back to the original RAW and start all over again. )

 

[Jase71]

Cheers Butters, so that sounds quite the same process as one would write a macro in excel. I'll have a noodle around later - with this in mind, I will now change my processing flow from touch up>add borders>save to touch up entire batch (as you would appreciate, a bulk app for this is pretty silly, as each shot begs for it's own parameters) then program the bulk-processing of the final cuts...... or else I'm going to be editing later, and therefore changing the colour scheme of the border !

Butters, you're a pro photographer by 'trade', right ?

 

[Jase71]

OK, Im stuck on the batch parameters window, it tells me "You must specily an extension for the output file(s)"

Ive already specified parameters under the 'file name'.

 

[buttersd70]

Cheers Butters, so that sounds quite the same process as one would write a macro in excel. I'll have a noodle around later - with this in mind, I will now change my processing flow from touch up>add borders>save to touch up entire batch (as you would appreciate, a bulk app for this is pretty silly, as each shot begs for it's own parameters) then program the bulk-processing of the final cuts...... or else I'm going to be editing later, and therefore changing the colour scheme of the border !

Butters, you're a pro photographer by 'trade', right ?

Yep. Very much the same thing. The action is the macro, the Batch command runs the macro for whatever shots (open, or folder) you want. I shoot in raw myself, so I have the luxury of being able to adjust colour and exposure (if needed) when the file is first opened, in the RAW edtor. By that stage, apart from composition and cropping corrections, they are close enough to where I want them so I can run a custom script that will get them 95% of the way to where they need to be.....In other formats, the knack of the workflow is to go through the files, and group your shots together ready for editing...so all the shots in the same general location, in the same general direction, at around the same time of day...they're all going to be quite similar from a colour / lighting perspective.....if inside, group the shots from room A, room B, etc. Again, they will have been shot under similar conditions....which makes the editing easier. What you do to correct one shot in the group should correct the others (or at least come close, then you can tweak it in)....

Oh the fun and joy.

Edit:

OK, Im stuck on the batch parameters window, it tells me "You must specily an extension for the output file(s)"

You should just be able to pick "extension" and it should then just save it with the original extension.....

What is it, jpg?

 

[Jase71]

Yes, they are .jpg at the stage I will be bordering them. I didn't see this as an option, but I have previously found my version to be a bit funny with recognising file formats until I reboot. I'm a little tanked now, but will review this process in the morning. I LOVE automation (probably borne from all these crazy excel sheets I build for work to transpose raw data complex end-user-friendly reports).

These particular photos, I can't really bulk-process the colour balance/brightness/contrast etc because each of them are taken under varied degrees of bad situations. For starters, the outdoor shots are subhect to a shitload of glare (ever been under a South East Asian sky with a camera) and the dodgy polarising filter I bought for my rig seems to have done very little. I'm hardly the photographer, but in many cases I would back the shutter speed down so much so that I has just enough light to make a decent shot (reviewed through the viewfinder), but with my limited knowledge I don't really know if that makes a whole lot of difference.

Anyway, I've been manipulating each shot as the subject dictates, some are greyscale, some are pushing towards sepia, and I'm also chopping bits within the frame itself and dropping out the brightness on everything but the subject matter, which I will tweak separatly. So no bulk prossing for this collection. APART from the borders, of course, which was the subject of the OP.

On another note, It kind of pisses me off when I see people with $150 point & clicks pulling out auto shots that are far superior to my bulky camera. Although it does provide me with the inspiration to work towards utilising the features of mine.

Many thanks mate, I'm sure to find this PS feature invaluabe as I get into it over the weekend. Out of interest, as a pro (?) do you think my border composition is a bit dark, or that the caption section across the bottom could be a few px higher in relation to the image size ?

 

[buttersd70]

No worries.
One thing I forgot to mention; if it is jpg, you will need to flatten the image for the batch to run smoothly, otherwise it will default to a 'save as' dialogue....

For the colour, I probably would lighten it a bit, to about 210/210/210, but thats a personal thing. The caption size looks fine to me. atm it's small enough to not drag the eye down to it too much, yet large enough so any included text can be legible.

What version of CS is it, btw? You might not be seeing what I'm seeing, and the batching in the earlier versions was....problematic.(I use CS3)

Edit: If you want a richer, more 'slide film' character, let me know...I have a script that does it in one click.

 

[Jase71]

Using CS1