AdobePS 7 - Tutorial: Batch-Processing
Batch-processing files and tasks in PS7
This tutorial is a follow-up to my previous tutorials, Defining patterns and
gradients from image packs and Defining an Action in PS7 – batch-defining brushes/gradients/patterns from Image Packs. If you aren’t at all familiar with anything those two links mention, it’d be better if you read those tutorials first to know what you can do to make your life with Photoshop that much easier.
This tutorial takes automating tasks a little further, to the point where cropping a large number of screencaps or defining a batch of patterns/brushes can be done with a few mouse clicks.
There are a few things to keep in mind before we go into the main tutorial:
- Batch-processing in PS7 only works best if all files you want to work on are in a single folder.
- the same set of actions will be applied to all files in that folder. So if you’ve chosen to apply cropping, resizing, adding an exclusion layer and a gradient to an image file, keep in mind that all those steps will be applied to every single file in the folder you specified.
- RAM. Batch-processing takes up a certain amount of RAM. Running Photoshop on your computer takes up a certain amount of RAM. The less RAM your computer has, the slower it goes, and the faster it may freeze. Depending on what kind of computer you have, depending on how many files there are, and depending on the number of actions you want to perform on your files you may experience lagging or, if you’re working with large images, freeze-ups. If that happens to you, try to batch-process fewer files at once. Make two or
even three separate folders and batch-process them one after the other. It may sound like extra work, but it’ll save you from having PS7 crash or, in the worst case, having your entire computer crash.
Since my previous tutorials dealt with patterns, I’m going to demonstrate batch-processing on a task most of us will have gone through at one point or another: defining a really large batch of patterns at once.
When you download an image pack of patterns, you’ll often end up with a whole bunch of perfectly cropped, ready-to-use patterns in various formats, like this:
Most of us don’t want hundreds of files lying around on their hard drives. It’s a hassle to find the one you want if you have to go through a ton of folders if you could just click a button and find all your patterns in one convenient window instead. However, defining 20 or more patterns by hand is tedious and takes up a lot of time that could be spent otherwise. If you know how to define a pattern from an image file and have already made an action to make that step easier, here’s the final step to make this task almost completely automatic.
1. Unzip/put all the patterns you want to define into a new folder. Remember where this folder is. For this tutorial, I put all my image files into a folder called set01.
2. Open Photoshop, go to File > Automate > Batch:
and open the Batch-processing window:
As always, take a look to familiarize yourself with this window. I’m going to break this down into sections.
The obvious part. Batch-processing works hand in hand with actions, so if you choose here, you’ll need to know what action you want to perform on your files and which set the action is in. Use the dropdown menus to
navigate to either.
Source: Folder specifies where your image files are located. You have several choices here in the dropdown menu as well, but for the sake of defining patterns in one go, I’d suggest putting them in a new folder. It’s easier to find, you just need to unzip the files once and don’t have to open them in PS, too, and you can always delete the folder later, and once you’ve learned how to use this function, you can go and play with the others.
Choose gets you the folder you want.
The three ticky boxes indicate various options you have.
- Override Action ‘Open’ Command refers to ‘open’ commands recorded within an action, for example: you recorded an action that requires a specific image to be opened and pasted onto your file. Since we’re
only defining patterns here, turn this off. You don’t need it.
- Include all Subfolders will do as it says and include all the folders you made in your original folder. Using this is up to choice and sometimes simply depends on how much processing power your computer
has.
- Suppress Color Profile Warnings keeps color warnings from popping up. Usually, you don’t have to bother with this, either.
This last part of the batch-processing window is of interest mainly when you’re manipulating files and want to save them, save them somewhere else, or save copies of them.
- Destination: None works for defining brushes and patterns. You’re defining from the files, not actually doing something to them.
- Destination: Save and Close means that once all the actions have been performed on a file, the file
will be saved and closed in its original location.
- Destination: Folder saves the files you worked on in a folder you specified below with Choose. If you tick Override Action ‘Save As’ Command, the action you’re performing on your files needs to include a ‘save as’ ( = save as copy ), otherwise no files will be saved. Example: You record an action of adding a blue exclusion layer to a series of .jpgs. Since you don’t want to override your original images and you want to keep the exclusion layer as a layer, you included ‘save as .psd’ in your action before you closed the image and stopped recording.
- File Naming works together with Destination: Folder and Override Action ‘Save As’ Command. Here you can pick and choose a few premade options for naming your files.
- Errors determines how errors encountered during a batch-processing should be handled. You can either have your batch be stopped to deal with the error at once, or you can have the error written to a log
file.
That’s a lot to look at for one single window, I know. However, once you’ve done a few simple batch-processings, experiment. There could be a million tutorials written on every single thing you can do with this, but you’ll only really learn by trying it yourself.
3. Back on track. Batch-processing window open? All files unzipped or sorted into a folder? Action recorded before? The rest is easy.
- Choose your Set and Action. In my previous tutorials, I’ve recorded an action called Define Pattern in a set called Define IP ( Image Pack ). Whatever you named yours, select the set and the action.
- Select the Source, the folder with your files. If you put several folders into one to batch-process a larger number of image packs, don’t forget to tick Include all Subfolders, otherwise only the main folder will be processed.
- Destination: None. Make sure you have this selected. You don’t want anything to be done to the image pack, after all.
- Click OK.
If you recorded your action right, you can now lean back and watch how PS does the work for you. Once it has done that, you might want to save your patterns to a set. ;)
Outside Link: Batch-Processing - the mother of all actions.
I think someone wrote a tutorial on this, ages ago, but since I already wrote the other two, and this one is the cummulation of them, I decided to post it as well. Batch-Processing takes defining patterns/gradients and actions to make defining patterns/brushes even easier to the point where all you have to do is unzip, click, and lean back.