Digital Focus: Manage Mounds of Photo Files

Feature: Batch Processing--Digital Imaging for the Lazy

Because "film" for digital cameras is free, you've probably noticed that you take more pictures with your digital camera than you ever did with a 35mm camera. That's great, except for one nagging little problem--you inevitably stack up an awful lot of images that need looking after.

You know what I mean. First and foremost, your pictures need to be named. When browsing file names, "pc067818.jpg" is not likely to remind you that it's a picture of your nephew holding a really big fish from last summer's camping trip. So you've got 20 or 40 pictures to name after every camera outing.

You might also want to convert all the images to a different file format, or save them as small, e-mail-friendly files to send to the folks. Or how about this common scenario: Half of your pictures are sideways because you took them by turning the camera vertically. It's time to save yourself some effort with a bit of batch processing.

Batch It in Windows

Windows, unfortunately, has very little ability to perform batch processing. Even in Windows ME and Windows XP, operating systems supposedly designed with digital photographers in mind, you can't select a bunch of photos and edit them together.

There's one important exception, however: If you're using one of those two versions of Windows it's easy to rename a bunch of photos in a single action. Open a folder that has some digital images and select several of them. (I like to select photos by clicking on each photo while holding down the Ctrl key.) Once they're selected, right-click on the last image you selected and choose Rename from the menu. Type a new name for the image and press Enter.

What you'll find is that these versions of Windows will rename all the selected files, but attach a number to the end to tell them all apart. What good is that, you ask? Well, if you don't intend to rename each and every image as soon as you transfer them from the PC, at least you can name them all after the trip you just took (like "Yellowstone") so they'll be easy to find when you do get around to naming or editing them.

That's not all. Do you have images that need to be rotated? Select them, then right-click on the last image. Choose Rotate Clockwise or Rotate Counter Clockwise from the menu, and they'll all be transformed before your very eyes.

If you're having trouble, keep in mind that the rotate trick works only from the drop-down menu that you get when you right-click. If you've set your folder to Windows XP's Filmstrip view and are trying to click the rotate button in the top half of the folder, it won't work. You'll rotate the last image selected only.

While we're on the subject, have you ever wanted to know the total file size of a bunch of photos? Select them, right-click, and choose Properties from the menu. Even in Windows 98, the Properties dialog box will tell you how many megabytes the images are taking up on your hard disk.

Let Software Do It

For more advanced batch processing, you'll have to rely on software that has batch capabilities built in. Adobe PhotoShop and PhotoShop Elements have some basic batch tools. PhotoShop Elements is a full-featured image editor that has a simple batch mode for converting images to a different file format, renaming images, and resizing them all to a specific resolution. To find that feature in both programs, choose File, Automate, Batch from the menu.

You can find Adobe Photoshop Elements for less than $80 at PCWorld.com's Product Finder.

Another option is ACD Systems' ACDSee. ACDSee is a relatively inexpensive image manager that displays thumbnails of your photos and helps you locate and edit pictures. It has image correction and editing tools built in, and supports standard PhotoShop plug-ins. It's available at our Product Finder for less than $40.

If, like me, you use Paint Shop Pro, consider my favorite tool for batch processing: a program from Jasc Software called Image Robot, which sells for about $89 from the company's Web site.

This tool works in conjunction with Paint Shop Pro to automatically perform a slew of edits on any number of images. You can "program" Image Robot to do just about anything that Paint Shop Pro is capable of doing while you go get a bite to eat. I have used this program to take a batch of 30 or 40 images and convert them all from JPEG to TIFF, to change them from color to gray-scale, and to increase the gamma by a few percent. You can also use it to sharpen a batch of images for printing, or add a copyright mark to the bottom corner of every picture.

Whatever program you choose, you'll find it's a lot more fun to watch TV while your PC toils than to perform the same edits on 30 different files yourself.