When was the last time you baked only one cookie? You do your laundry a load at a time, right? Why not take the same approach for your memory keeping?
There are quite a few ways you can add the “batch process” approach to your photography and digital scrapbooking. Let the computer do the work for you and save your precious minutes in the process!
A few ways to get started:
Photo importing: Leverage the capabilities of your camera’s software or that of your favorite photo editing program to make basic changes automatically, like file type conversion.
RAW processing: Make adjustments to as many photos at a time that makes sense. Group shots with similar lighting conditions before making edits.
Photo editing: Use actions or presets to expedite changes, like vignetting, that you want to make to a group of photos. Use the batch processor to make basic edits like sharpening too!
Re-naming: Regardless of file type, re-naming files using batch processing takes a fraction of the time and ensures consistency. Most photo software has this capability.
Re-sizing: The batch processor can make easy work of compressing files or changing the dimensions.
Watermarking: Save time in this important step of image protection by letting a batch processor do the work. Save as a PSD or another editable file to move around the layer if needed.
Tagging: If you get into the groove, tagging 20 kits takes less time than doing those piecemeal as they come in. Consider the time to load your software and refresh yourself.
Uploading: If you plan to make several new layouts in an evening, wait until you’re all done to upload to the galleries.
Printing: Save upload time and shipping costs by having your digiscrap pages printed in batches of 50 or more.
Batch processing, like keyboard shortcuts, is just another way to make your computer time more productive. Once you’re on the lookout for time-savers, it becomes second nature to incorporate them into your memory keeping routine!
How do you use batch processing in your photo workflow or your scrapbooking activities?
I batch process my photos in Lightroom every day. Without it, I probably would have given up on Project 365 a long time ago. I run a standard sharpen and contrast preset as I import the photos into Lightroom. This is automatic and takes no effort and time on my part. For the photos I want to adjust more, I do them individually with the sliders. Then I have exporting presets set up in Lightroom so that I can just choose “Export blog photos” and it will automatically export them at the smaller resolution to the appropriate folders. Or “Export full-size for scrapping” and it will know what to do because of the preset I’ve set up. It really is a HUGE time saver.
Yet another tantalizing tidbit about Lightroom…..
Do you know if you can resize a batch of photos in PSE?
Yes! Here’s a screenshot of the “Process Multiple Files” window in PSE:
http://graphicssoft.about.com/od/pselements/ss/processmultiple.htm