Automating Photoshop
Photography is a very fun hobby, being out taking pictures surrounded by nature, taking photos of family members, there is very little to not like about photography. There is a little bit of work to it of course, making sure composition and camera settings are all correct, deciding to you use a flash or not, but most of it is just finding what you want to take a photo of and just doing it. But being out taking photos is only the beginning of photography. To get those pictures on the internet or printed requires a long tedious process that starts only after you get back to your computer.
One of the benefits of digital photography is you do not have to get film processed, which can be a very expensive , which allows photographers now to take hundreds of pictures without any thought of cost. It ends up there is a cost, but not a financial one, but with time. You must go through every photo to decide what ones are worth keeping or using.
Then after going through all of those photos you have to perform color correction, resizing, adding copyright info and a watermark. All of this can add up to hours of post-processing per photo shoot. I thought computers were supposed to make life easier?
Well now it can.
Automator for Mac
Mac has an application built in called “Automator” which makes it easy to automate several applications, including Photoshop if you have the correct plugin. I created an automator script that uses the Photoshop CS4 Action Pack. This pack allows you to automate all kinds of photoshop processes, from color correction, cropping, adding watermarks, or resizing. Several of these I do not see a purpose for automating because every image is unique, but I was able to use many of these to apply changes that I like to make to every photo.
My Photoshop Auto Process Script
You can download the script I made from my other website (ZenorSoft Web Design) and modify it to your own needs or just make your own. (The Resize action caused the script to fail for some reason, so I had to use some of the other resize actions).
Here is my new post processing routine:
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Import all photos to iPhoto
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Go through all of the photos and flag the ones I will possibly use (and add them to an album for recalling later if needed)
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Copy all flagged photos to a directory on my desktop
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I manually modify all of my files for color correction and cropping in photoshop, then save it as a .psd (leaving the original is .jpg)
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I highlite all photos and drag them onto the script’s icon (which usually sits on my desktop)
Here is what the script does
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The script moves all photos to an Originals directory
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Then only .psd files are passed to the next part of the script
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The file is opened in photoshop
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Copyright info added to the IPTC fields (meta data)
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Images resized to no larger than 2560px wide (the width of my desktop monitor, for my photo gallery)
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Images saved to the Large Photos Directory
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Original .psd file is then reopened in photoshop
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Copyright info added again
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Images resized to no larger than 800 wide by 400 tall (for uploading to my blog)
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Images saved to the Small Photos Directory
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.PSD files moved to a Done Directory
The end result is that each .jpg original is moved to a directory called “originals”, and two copies of the photo are made, each from the .psd (not from the .jpg as to keep the number of compressions to a minimum), one photo is no larger than 2560 px wide and the other 800 px wide. The final step is that the .psd files are moved to a “done” directory.
All of those happen in just a few seconds for each photo. The only downside is that the script takes focus so I cannot do anything else while it is running, but for the amount of time this script saves me I can live with getting off of my computer for 5 or 10 minutes while it processes 50 + photos. My next step will be to add a watermark to this process.
If you have tried this script, let me know what you think of it. Also, what else can be added to this script to reduce the post-production work load of all photographers alike? Please leave a comment below.
