This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
Make Some Batch Magic!
This is the fun part where all the work we just did totally pays off. To take advantage of the recorded actions, we’ll batch apply them to a folder of images. Get ready to be blown away!
- Launch Bridge. If you don’t already have Adobe Bridge open, choose File > Browse In Bridge to launch it from within Photoshop. Navigate to a folder that contains multiple vertical and horizontal images, all with an aspect radio of 2:3.
Sort by dimensions. Within Bridge, choose View > Sort > By Dimensions. As if by magic, all the vertical images now appear grouped together at the top of the window, followed by all the horizontal images below.
Because the action we run on each photo depends on whether it’s horizontal or vertical, it helps to sort the entire folder of images according to their orientation. (If you have Photoshop CS6 or newer, the addition of conditional actions makes this step unnecessary. See the sidebar “Conditional Actions” for details. Pretty cool stuff.)
Select and process the vertical images. Now that the images are sorted by dimension, it’s easy to select only the vertical images by clicking the first one and Shift-clicking the last one (Figure 4.28). Choose Tools > Photoshop > Image Processor.
FIGURE 4.28. Quickly sort the images by dimension in Bridge, then run the action in two batches, starting with the vertical images.
Choose the Image Processor options. Select the option to Save in Same Location (for maximum convenience) and under File Type, choose JPEG with a quality setting of 12. For Preferences, put a check next to Run Action and choose My Border Designs for the set and 5 x 5 Vertical for the action (Figure 4.29).
FIGURE 4.29. You can process multiple images at once with Image Processor. No need to duplicate files first or worry about accidental override.
Bridge will process the files and save them in a new folder called JPEG, stored within the current image folder.
Repeat with the horizontal images. When Bridge finishes processing the vertical images, select all the horizontal ones, choose Tools > Photoshop > Image Processor, and change the selected action to 5 x 5 Horizontal. Click Run to process the horizontal images. Bridge adds the finished images to the previously generated JPEG folder located within the image folder (Figure 4.30). Pretty cool, huh?
FIGURE 4.30. You can process multiple images at once with Image Processor. No need to duplicate files first or worry about accidental override.
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And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how you knock out a session album almost instantaneously. As mentioned in Chapter 2, these little books can be as wondrous for your marketing efforts as they are for your bottom line. Now that you’ve created a border design action set, you can whip these books out in seconds. Talk about cost effectiveness—wow!
Conditional Actions
Adobe Photoshop CS6 introduced conditional actions making it possible for Photoshop to intelligently choose which action to run on which image, based on predetermined conditions (such as image orientation)—saving you even more time! If you have CS6 or newer, you can avoid having to sort images and run multiple batches. Instead, all you have to do is:
- Create an additional action within the My Border Designs set, and name it Conditional.
- From the Action panel’s menu, choose Insert Conditional. In the dialog that follows, select Document Is Landscape from the If Current menu, and choose 5 x 5 Horizontal for Then Play Action.
- From the Else Play menu, select 5 x 5 Vertical (Figure 4.31). These settings tell Photoshop that if the image is horizontal, it should run the horizontal action. For everything else, it should run the vertical one. Click OK. The finished action set should resemble Figure 4.32.
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FIGURE 4.31. With the introduction of Conditional Actions in CS6, Photoshop can now make intelligent decisions about which action to run on a given photo.
FIGURE 4.32. The conditional action completes the set.
When you’re ready to batch, instead of sorting images by dimensions and processing them in two separate batches (one for horizontal images and one for verticals), select all the images and run the Image Processor choosing Conditional as the Run Action. Photoshop will process all the images, intelligently choosing the right action based on the photo’s orientation. Bam!