If you are not quite familiar with Photoshop, this program has these wonderful little features called Actions. These Actions have many different uses from creating remarkable effects to maximizing your productivity and of course they can always be counted on to handle the common and tiresome tasks that are nothing more than time consuming.
I only just discovered the wonder of Batch Processing. I'm dedicated and detail oriented, but sitting in front of the computer adjusting the Hue/Saturation for the countless number of photos taken at my son's first birthday was simply out of the question. I did find a more than happy solution in Batch Processing.
When you're creating an action you need it to do one thing: Something. In my case, I needed to change the Hue/Saturation for 75+ images from blue to my "trademark" teal. Maybe you need an action for a different purpose, but humor me and tell yourself, "Hey, I need to make my image the same color as hers!" Next, you'll need something to work on. Get a small image, like an icon, preferably the one I'm using for this tutorial.
Now go to Window - Actions and make sure it is checked. If it is, you should see a tab in the Layers Palette labeled, of course, Actions.
Click on the arrow button to enter the Actions menu and then "new Set." This will create a folder for your newly created action (the folder is not mandatory, but it does help with organization.)
Now go back to the Actions menu and choose "New Action." Have an idea of the steps you'll need to take and their order before recording an action. Since this is a fairly simple action, you will master this in no time at all.
Next comes recording. Begin by clicking on the little circle icon in between the square and the triangle at the bottom of the palette. Once that is selected everything you do in Photoshop will be recorded until the end of action. If you do the wrong step no worries, simply stop the action by clicking the square icon and return to your last step.
For my action, the first thing I need to do is change the Mode of the image to RGB, since .gif files are saved in Index mode which don't take too kindly to colorization. So with the action recording, go to Image - Mode - RGB. Now take a look at your Actions palette, it should look like this:
Next, we need to remove the image of it's current color to make adding our own color easier to apply, so go to Image - Adjustment - Desaturate.
Now that we have a naked grey image, we need to add some color. Make sure your action is still recording and go to Image - Adjustments - Hue/Saturation. I have the settings for my teal color saved in a .ahu (Hue/Saturation) file already so all I have to do is click Load and select Teal.ahu, but since you don't have that you'll have to use the sliders. Use these settings for my color:
Finally, we save it for the web. Check that your action is still recording and go to File - Save For the Web and set your file type and optimization settings. I use the customary GIF settings. Choose the destination directory and save.
Now you can press the square button on the actions tab and stop recording. To put your newly created action into action, we'll need to do a Batch Process. A batch process will take all the images in a specified directory and apply whatever changes were recorded in the action.
Begin by going to File -Automate - Batch and make sure the name of the Action Set you just made is in the first dropdown list and the name of the Action is in the second. Set the third dropdown box (next to Source) to Folder and use the Choose button to find your duplicated or created folder of images. For destination, you can leave it set to it's default "None" to have the action applied and saved in the source folder, or save the "actionized" images into a separate folder. Click OK once you have everything set to your liking..
Now you can sit back and watch your images color themselves because you're using Actions and Batch Processing to do your tedious work. - 16039
I only just discovered the wonder of Batch Processing. I'm dedicated and detail oriented, but sitting in front of the computer adjusting the Hue/Saturation for the countless number of photos taken at my son's first birthday was simply out of the question. I did find a more than happy solution in Batch Processing.
When you're creating an action you need it to do one thing: Something. In my case, I needed to change the Hue/Saturation for 75+ images from blue to my "trademark" teal. Maybe you need an action for a different purpose, but humor me and tell yourself, "Hey, I need to make my image the same color as hers!" Next, you'll need something to work on. Get a small image, like an icon, preferably the one I'm using for this tutorial.
Now go to Window - Actions and make sure it is checked. If it is, you should see a tab in the Layers Palette labeled, of course, Actions.
Click on the arrow button to enter the Actions menu and then "new Set." This will create a folder for your newly created action (the folder is not mandatory, but it does help with organization.)
Now go back to the Actions menu and choose "New Action." Have an idea of the steps you'll need to take and their order before recording an action. Since this is a fairly simple action, you will master this in no time at all.
Next comes recording. Begin by clicking on the little circle icon in between the square and the triangle at the bottom of the palette. Once that is selected everything you do in Photoshop will be recorded until the end of action. If you do the wrong step no worries, simply stop the action by clicking the square icon and return to your last step.
For my action, the first thing I need to do is change the Mode of the image to RGB, since .gif files are saved in Index mode which don't take too kindly to colorization. So with the action recording, go to Image - Mode - RGB. Now take a look at your Actions palette, it should look like this:
Next, we need to remove the image of it's current color to make adding our own color easier to apply, so go to Image - Adjustment - Desaturate.
Now that we have a naked grey image, we need to add some color. Make sure your action is still recording and go to Image - Adjustments - Hue/Saturation. I have the settings for my teal color saved in a .ahu (Hue/Saturation) file already so all I have to do is click Load and select Teal.ahu, but since you don't have that you'll have to use the sliders. Use these settings for my color:
Finally, we save it for the web. Check that your action is still recording and go to File - Save For the Web and set your file type and optimization settings. I use the customary GIF settings. Choose the destination directory and save.
Now you can press the square button on the actions tab and stop recording. To put your newly created action into action, we'll need to do a Batch Process. A batch process will take all the images in a specified directory and apply whatever changes were recorded in the action.
Begin by going to File -Automate - Batch and make sure the name of the Action Set you just made is in the first dropdown list and the name of the Action is in the second. Set the third dropdown box (next to Source) to Folder and use the Choose button to find your duplicated or created folder of images. For destination, you can leave it set to it's default "None" to have the action applied and saved in the source folder, or save the "actionized" images into a separate folder. Click OK once you have everything set to your liking..
Now you can sit back and watch your images color themselves because you're using Actions and Batch Processing to do your tedious work. - 16039
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