Batch processing features

These are features of Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Illustrator and Bridge that allow some kind of manipulation of several files or images. Examples that are describe in this page include, Photoshop's Image Processor for making mass changes to many files at once, creating a web gallery using Bridge, the zoomify feature of Photoshop to create several views of a large graphic, and using graphic variables to set up several variations of an image.

Image Processor in Photoshop

This feature of Photoshop can save a lot of time by giving you the ability to do batch processing of images. This would be very useful for doing things like creating thumbnails of several images at once, or making photo black and white. You can quickly resize or process many of the images: ones using the image processor in Photoshop.

If you are going to select images from several folders you want to open them and Adobe Bridge.

The size you choose an image processors is actually a box with him all images will sit.

Make sure your color is SRGB. Can also take several different file types and convert them into a single sites such as JPEG.

Web photo gallery using Bridge

Frankly, up to this point I have heard and read about how Abode Bridge is suppose to increase productivity, but never really saw much use in this program. Well, finally I have something that I can say is useful to me in Bridge. That is the ability to create a web photo gallery using Bridge.

In Photoshop CS3, you had the ability to create a Web photo gallery. In CS4, this feature has been move to Bridge. In order to make photo gallery for the web using Bridge, you just need to browse to and select the images that you want in your gallery, then go to the output window and click web gallery. On the right side of the screen in the output you can set all of the gallery parameters like color and image size. Once you are satisfied with the output settings, simply click save. Bridge with then create the entire web gallery, complete with thumbnails and HTML. if you want you can modify the HTML and use it in your site, or use the assets as individual files to add to your site.

Using graphic variables in Photoshop

Being somewhat of a code geek, I really like this feature of Photoshop. Using variables to create modifications from a single Photoshop graphic resonates with how I like to work. The fact that you can make literally hundreds of modifications using a spreadsheet makes this workflow even more compelling. Below are the steps to manually use graphic variables and how to attach a CSV or tab delimited txt file to modify a banner or other image.

First you need to define layers as variables. Then you have to create data sets. Once the new data center is created, he then need to set each variable within the data set. Once you have to fall and all the data sets that you wont, you need to export these files:

 File > Export > Data Sets as Files

You can only export data sets as files in that PSD format.

The last step would be to them up to optimize these PSD files and the save for web and devices dialog box.

You can also use a spreadsheet to populate the values. In order to do this the top of each column must be the name of the variable inside the columns you can define each variable value. You can use any spreadsheet provided it can generate a comma delimited file of a tab delimited file.

The comma or tab delimited file must be saved and the same folder as the images.

To import the file you need to go to:

 Image > Variables  > Data Sets

Then click and import button. Select browse and find the file. Once you have imported the CSV files, you then can export all of the images in the same manner as above when we do it manually.

Now all that is left to do is optimizing the normal way.