RE: FN-FORUM: Batch process digital photo alterations

date posted 11th November 2007 11:52

Sam wrote:
> I'm working with a digital photo printing site the offers a service to
> "correct" the digital prints for things like underexposure etc to make =
the

> resulting print better. Currently he does this by hand in his software

> Due to the increasing amount of photos he is having to deal with he =
has
> requested for me to find some software that will take a batch of =
images=20
> and sequentially go through each image, showing a side by side =
comparison=20
> with best guess alterations to things like contrast, brightness, =
colour
> saturation etc and allowing a human to decide if it is correct or to =
fine
> tune the automatic fixes in case of mistakes.

> Can anyone recommend anything that will do this sort of thing?


At the risk of giving away trade secrets(!), my partner is a pro digital
photographer and her workflow was revolutionised when she discovered =
Adobe
Bridge, the image management component of Adobe Photoshop CS+.

Where she used to tweak individual images one-by-one, she now =
progressively
tunes whole batches of images in one go - contrast, brightness, =
saturation,
cropping, shadow boost/highlight pulling, sharpening, vignetting, etc. =
You
can copy and paste selected settings from a tuned image to other similar
images, auto tune images in a single click, etc.

The best part is that the workflow is NON-DESTRUCTIVE: no changes are =
made
to the original images, instead they are stored in a "meta-data" XML =
file
alongside the image. When you are happy with the changes (verified via a
thumbnail/filmstrip view), you export the tuned images in any standard
format using a batch process.

Originally, this functionality was limited to RAW (i.e., digital camera =
raw
negative images), but as of CS3, any standard image type can be managed
using the same workflow. RAW is still the best format to work with, as =
it
has a higher dynamic range than general use formats like JPEG, TIFF, =
etc,
but you may not have control over this.=20

If you work with lossy formats like JPEG, then non-destructive workflow =
will
have another benefit. You can tweak a batch of images, then go back and
fine-tune a particular image several times without loss of quality, =
because
the image isn't resaved between each step.

Adobe also have an Adobe Lightroom app, more closely aimed at =
photographers,
but it doesn't seem to offer much RoI if you already have Photoshop (and
therefore Bridge).

Hope that helps .. my partner will kill me if she finds out I've shared
this!

Cheers, Ben

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Ben Johnson, Neogic Web Solutions
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