Tutorial: Batch Processing Camera RAW to JPEG

The problem I came across the other day was that we had been out all day taking pictures of a bunch of flowers. I came home after taking some 250+ pictures all taken in camera RAW. Awesome idea, but when I came home, I didn't realize how tedious it would be to just look at all of the images to see which ones I liked. On top of being time consuming, I would also have to then take into Photoshop all of the images I liked, edit them and re-save them as a JPEG or whatever other file type I wished for posting purposes.

Knowing it was possible to process all of the files automatically, but yet, not knowing how to accomplish that goal myself, I went about online to figure out how to do it. The problem came though that I was really unsure of what the process was called. So I spent some time looking around and finally came across something that gave me the basics but didnt really tell me everything. So I sort of had to just guess my way through it.

Anyway, to save myself sometime, figured I would post it here for later use, as well as hopefully helping anyone else who may need it as well.

Step 1: Obviously the first step is to open Photoshop up. (assuming at least that photoshop is the program you are using. If its not, why are you here then? )

Step 2: You need to create the action over in the actions flyout. If you do not see the action flyout, you can bring it back up by clicking on the Window tab in the toolbar and activating the Actions option. Or for those like myself who prefer shortcut keys ALT + F9 will also bring it back up.

Step 3: The next thing I would do is to create a new folder for your custom actions. So under the actions flyout, click the new folder option.

Step 4: With the new folder created, click on it to highlight it, then selct the create new action option.

Step 5: A bit about the options here:

Name – Self Explanatory

Set – This is the folders that you have created for your actions. If your custom action folder is not selected, select it here now.

Function key – I have not used this myself, but I would imagine you could use this option to fast track the specified action. In the case of this type of action here, I don’t imagine this would be too helpful. Perhaps in the case if you were creating custom selections for creating perhaps a border for your images, it might be a bit more helpful for something like that.

Color – I have yet to figure out what this actually does. I am guessing perhaps if you are using an action to create a background piece that perhaps it is used for the background color? I am really not sure.

When you have everything completed, click the record button

Step 6: Now this is important. From here on, everything you click will be recorded and added to the action. So make sure that anything you want to add to this action, you go through in the EXACT order it should be. Granted things can be edited later, but its just good practice to try to get it right the first time then to have to spend all the extra time editing later.

For the case of this action, all I wanted was for an action to open Camera RAW images then to resave them as JPEG.

From this point I opened up the first image that I wanted to be done. The camera RAW options opened up inside of photoshop. As I mentioned before, everything you edit will be done to EACH image. So in the case of this, I figure less is more. I don’t want to go through and edit the exposure and everything else that I would normally. Those edits might not be accurate from image to image. So in this case, the only thing I opted to change was the white balance from “As Shot” to “Cloudy”. I liked the look of that option, so I went with it. I then precedded to click on the Open in Photoshop option.

Now with Photoshop open, the image itself is fine. If I wanted to change the size of the image to a smaller format, I could do that here first. In this case though, all I wish to do is to resave it. So I go to File> Save As> Select JPEG as my file type, name my file.

The final thing I need to do now is to close the file out and leave just Photoshop Open. Done.

Click Stop Recording in the Actions flyout. You will now see the Action you created in the folder you opted to attach it to.

Step 7: Now go to File> Automate> Batch and look at the options here.

The Play Options:

Set – Once again, the action folder that you are using, in this case, Custom Actions

Action – the name of the action you are using.

Source Options:

Source – Folder is what you will need for this option. I have not found a need for the other options so far.

Choose: This option is the folder in which all of your camera raw pictures are located. Ideally I believe they should be somewhere on your harddrive and not inside of the memory card. Doing this I believe would save time and also not have the chance of corrupting your memory card if something went wrong.

Override Action “Open” Command: Unsure

Include all Sub-Folders: Have all of your images from a weeks worth of photoshoots in one folder seperated in their own subfolders, click this and it will go through each subfolder one after the other.

Suppress File Open Options Dialogue box: I am not 100%, but I believe this option stops you from having to manually click an options that happen during the opening of the file. For instance, I know some images might have a different color profile then the native setting inside of photoshop, so when this happens, photoshop always asks me if I wish to convert the profile to that used by the program, or that inset with the camera RAW file. Having this command selected will bypass this and I think it will just stick with whatever you had set during the original recording.

Suppress Color Profile Warnings: Unsure

Destination Options:

Destination – Once again, I opted for Folder as my option. I have not found a need for the rest of them yet.

Choose – The folder you are putting the new files into. I created a folder on my desktop called JPEGs, which is where I opted to save all of the converted files.

Override Action “Save As” Command: This makes it so you don’t have to keep selecting all of the options to save a file. You don’t need to change the name or the file type or anything.

File Naming – Now I am not 100% sure what all of the saving options use here. I know with the first section, I opted to use the 3 digit seriel number as my file name. This would make all of my files look like this as they save: 001, 002, 003, etc etc. The option to the right of it I chose extension. This option will take the File Extension, in this case JPEG, that you originally saved the file to during the action recording as the file type for all of your images.

Step 8: Click ok. This will start your batch process. Now walk away from the computer and do what ever needs to be done while the computer does all of the work. At any time say you forgot to set something up, just hit esc on your computer and you can cancel the Batch process when needed.

Now I know this process works inside of Photoshop, but I am unsure it works inside of Lightroom or another photo editing software. At least with Lightroom, since it is an Adobe product, I am sure there is the chance of a similar procedure, but as I do not have access to the program I am unsure. If anyone has it and knows how to do a batch process in it, please let me know as I am curious now. Also, if I have forgotten a step, or if I explained something wrong, please let me know! I am still learning alot of this stuff myself, so any thing I post is just how I understand things as of now. Thanks again :)

PS - Also, my apology about the formatting here, I am still trying to figure out how to format the blogs with any pictures in. The edit window this whole thing looks completely different to me.