so nearly everybody has come across a time where they have just downloaded images from a digital camera and the images are huge! if only there was an easier way to resize them all in one step, instead of going through them all manually. until now, perhaps you have downloaded photoshop and played around with the filters, but thats the extent of it. here, i’ll show you how to create an “action” in photoshop that will allow you to make life easier, and you can even expand to other things such as getting photos print ready in cmyk, or even renaming files.
first off, you’re going to need photoshop obviously. go ahead and launch photoshop (i am using cs3), then open ONE of your image files. we will need this to record you’re actions so the program knows what to do for all the rest of the images. once the image is opened, we can go on to the next step.
you will need to open up your actions menu. it should be on the right sidebar, icon being a play/sideways triangle icon. if this icon is not present, you can also open by pressing ( alt+f9 ) or go into windows menu on top and clicking actions. once this menu is open, you should see a list of options and pre-made actions. click on the “record” icon below (the circle in between square and triangle).
once you click this icon, a menu should appear. you will be able to name the action you are about to create. this can be saved for future use so it wouldn’t be a bad idea to think of a name you will remember, for now i will call it “resize”. you really don’t have to touch any of the other options for now. once you have named the action, press record and it will begin recording your actions from now on until you stop it.
now every main action you do will record in photoshop under the name you inputed. since we will be resizing images, we will open up the “image size” menu. you can go to image menu and click image size, or press ( alt + ctrl + i ). once the menu is open, you may choose a new image size for your pictures. make sure the constrain proportions checkbox is checked (so your images do not get distorted), and your can press ok. a quick note about online images, your resolution shouldn’t need to go past 72 unless people will be downloading and printing your images.
now that you have resized the image, you have to save the new file. just in case you don’t want to write over your original file, so you have to click on “SAVE AS”. this can be found under “file” or simply press ( shift + ctrl + s ). it would be best to save it in a folder aside from the one that all your images are in. once you have saved, press ok and the menu will automatically close. when saving in jpg and other formats, it may ask you for quality size, medium is usually fine for web, but it is up to you what you set the quality as. just press ok when you are finished.
make sure you close out of the image when you have saved. this is very important when doing multiple files because if you don’t record this step, ALL of the files you try and resize through the batch process will stay open and perhaps might crash your photoshop, or you just have to simply sit there and close out of each one.
the next important step is to stop the recording process. go back to your actions menu and click on the squard next to the record button. this will stop the recording. notice how a few extra steps have appeared from when you started. if you wanted to throw in a few extra steps such as changing the file to another color mode (grayscale etc), or even changing the brightness, it will all record until you press stop.
now that the action has been recorded, we can start the batch process. go under “file” and find your way down to the “automate” menu, inside there you will find “batch…” go ahead and click that and a new menu will appear.
we have to assign the action that we created, so under the second drop down menu where it says action, click and select the action you named, in my case, it would be “resize”. once you have clicked this, we should be ready to go by default, but i have included a step to send all the new files into a new folder, rename etc.
you will have to tell the batch process which folder to activate the action on. you will have to click on source “folder” then click choose and select your folder with all the images. back on the batch menu, you can select a new filename for the files if you wish, which will automatically generate numbers at the end for you. for instance, if the group of files you are batching are from a camping trip, porn shoot, etc. you may also click on “destination” folder, then press choose to point all the new files to a certain directory.
i hope this tutorial can be of use to someone, and it is 2 in the morning so excuse me for any grammatical errors. let me know if you are confused and need any help. as i am starving to death, i will have to find my way to some taco bell and crash. good night!
