PS bulk file processing? - PS gurus please

[roy the boy]

Is there any way of processing many files at once in PS? - I've heard someone mention 'batch' files.

The reason for this is that I stupidly volunteered to take photos of staff at my school for ID cards, which meant cropping, replacing the background with 'white', adjusting brightness and contrast and reducing the file size for 90 staff. This took me (a PS learner) the best part of 3 days, including printing the cards and programming them for door access.

All good and well, but they now want me to do the same for 650 students

I'm thinking of leaving the backgorund on the kids photos as I reckon the 'magic wand' processs could not be automated, so it'd just be cropping, brightening and reducing.

Is it possible or am I going to be very busy 24/7 for the next week or 2? (apart from performing my usual role)

[graham@reading]

"Actions" are what you want to research. You can set up an action to do some of that stuff automatically, but it has to be constant (ie same values for each file etc). Then you can go to the file menu -> Automate -> Batch and choose the action you've created and apply it to open files, specific files, folders etc.

[roy the boy]

Thanks for that Graham - looks like I'm glued to my pc for a while.

Just another problem - I've just opened my PS (version 6) and had some messages about scratch disks and colour settings that I haven't had before. Not a problem in itself but now my 'fill bucket' has disappeared from the tools menu - any ideas?

[graham@reading]

It might have changed to the gradient fill tool - a square with a varying level of darkness from one side to the other. Hold the button on it (or might be right mouse button in 6 can't remember) and you should get the option to switch it to the bucket.

Scratch disk is better off being a different disk to your windows disk, if you have a second one (local disk that is, not a network one). But if you don't have a second drive,don't worry too much about it.

As for being glued to your PC, even though you're just starting out with actions, it'll still be quicker to experiment with them and use them to automate as much as possible, than it would be to do that lot by hand.

[roy the boy]

Graham, I could kiss you but I won't.

I didn't need the fill bucket tool but I've got it back as per your instructions (held button on it).

In the last hour I've managed to edit over 200 of these photos with a default crop, brightness, file size and yes, even magic wands (3 of them - left, right and top centre). I just did a step backward if the magic wand went a bit too far and I'll probably have to re-do about a dozen due to the kids being stood slightly off centre and missing the crop. But what a revelation - I'll probably have them all done for work in the morning.

Thanks for your advice - the beer's on tap if I ever meet you.