Please please help with batch postprocessing

[marysiajas]

Good morning,

I am semi novice. Have been using elements for some time now but mostly doing easy editing there. Desperatly need your help.

I have large number of photos from the dog trial. 600+. They are all big files. Photos taken in very dark fairground buidling with dark, rainy, gloomy day outside. Need a lot of postprocessing. I take these photos for my friends and create slideshows plus I upload them to my smugmug account so everybody can go there and download whatever they want.

I have done it few times before and it took me long LONG hours to do postprocessing on approximately 200+ best photos. I first download all photos, change all of them to psd format and then have to go to each one for manual adjustments (very difficult light conditions- autoamtic fix does not do it right). I do sometimes have used some batch processing but it does seem to have its limitations. Plus each one has to be saved for web. It means spending a lot of time on each picture. Takes forever.

This is typical result of my work. Not great photos. Just great memories of good times.

http://www.photoshow.net/watch/TS8CU5fU

Any ideas how to approach it the postprocessing to make it a bit less painful?

I would really appreciate any input you may have. Just dreading spending the next five nights working on these photos,

m

[bwolford]

Are they JPG or Raw files? What version of PSE do you have?

Brice

[marysiajas]

Are they JPG or Raw files? What version of PSE do you have?

Brice

Sorry, I should give this information in first post. I have elements 3.0. All files are jpg files.

thanks,

m

[Mapman88]

Hi,

I am new user with same problem, not sure if I should have started new thread or not...

I took 200+ photos at wedding, jpg format. I have them organized into Wedding, then tagged into 4 groups. It seems cumbersome to open, edit, save, and open the next photo to edit it.....(just about every photo needs lighting and cropping.

My steps are
From the organizer I doubleclick a photo...I clcik edit, quick fix...I adjust the ligjting, etc and save...I have to save and rename and change file type...then I have to save jpg options...then I have to close editor to get back to organizer....then clcik back in the organizer to get back to thumbnails, select the next photo....then clcik edit, quick fix to open the editor again...

Is there any way I can stay in the editor and go from pic to pic as I fix them?

thanks,
mapman

[bwolford]

Well the first step is open more than one file at a time. You can actually open many of them.

JPG: I recently took portraits of a high school marching band. I opened the first image and used adjustment layers to correct it. Since I was very careful about keeping lighting and other parameters the same, all my pictures needed similar corrections. I just dragged and dropped the adjustement layers to the other pictures. Once I had done that, all I needed to do was save them. You can do this in just about any version of PSE.

RAW: PSE3 has the file browser. If you were using RAW, you could make an adjustment to one picture and then apply that RAW adjustment to all of the other pictures. It works in a snap and saves many hours. PSE4 doesn't have file browser. I haven't found a way to apply a raw update to many raw images in PSE4. I now shoot in RAW and if I have portraits to process, I will do the raw processing in PSE3 and use file browser to apply them across multiple images. If I have other work to do on them in batch mode, I will use PSE4.

PSE4 does have process multiple files. It allows you to rename, change the size, and/or convert files in batch. Unfortunately it doesn't allow you to apply image adjustments. You can do quick fixes like auto color, sharpen, etc. You can also apply captions.

If someone else has a better process in PSE4, I'd sure like to hear about it.

I did just buy PSCS2. Now I just have to figure out batch processing and actions there. I've got to figure out how to get an action to run, pause to allow adjustments, and then continue. I know it is much more powerful and lends itself to just this situation. Not what you wanted to hear either!

Brice