Of course, I am sure that all of us who have used the batch processing function have encountered the problem when trying to save images as JPEGs or GIFs. I am of course talking about the options box:

When running a batch process that opens an image, performs some actions and then saves them, this annoying little box will appear every time. How does one get around this?

Recently I was presented with about 400 images that needed to have a reflective shadow removed from the bottom of the image. As all the images were the same size, it was a simple case of cropping the image from the top and saving it. But I did not want to be presented with the problem of having to deal with the options box when I saved the image, so I came up with this:

As most images being dealt with are JPEGs, these are more likely to be viewed on a website, and some people forget about this option in the File Menu:

“SAVE FOR WEB AND DEVICES”

With this option, you can save images so they are compatible with web pages.

Back to the batch processing. This is the order I record my actions:

1. Start with an example image already open
2. Start recording your actions
3. Perform all changes needed on images (Resizing, Colour changes, Cropping)
4. Click “File” -> “Save for Web and Devices”
5. Choose your default settings for either JPEG of GIF (You may want to split your jpgs and gifs into 2 separate folders to be processed separately if you want to maintain file type)
6. Click “Save” and save the image to another folder which will hold your post-processed images. Make sure to keep the file name the same.
7. Close the image without saving
8. Stop recording

By choosing to save the image in this way, you will not be presented with the JPEG or GIF options box, as you have already provided the Action with all the details it needs, including using it’s default name.

Now onto the Batch!

1. Click “File” -> “Automate” -> “Batch…”
2. Select your Action from the “Action” box
3. Choose the “Source” folder where all your images are
4. Leave “Destination” set to “None” <–IMPORTANT, AS THE ACTION ALREADY HAS IT’S DESTINATION SET
5. Click “OK”

The batch process should then start opening each image, perform the actions, save the image to the destination folder, and then close it.

Hope this has been useful!!

Getting these to work in all browsers was actually a little more tricky than I first thought - mainly because I’m using PNGs to create a realistic looking shadow. So take these as a work-in-progress and nothing more.

The tabs should hopefully looking something like the following…

There’s a demo here and you can download a zip of all the files here.

This script in conjunction with jQuery allows just that… Very simple and fairly unobtrusive.

If you wanted to add captions to all images (from their longdesc, title or alt attributes) within <div class=”content”/> you could do:

$('div.content').addCaptions();

Which produces something like this:

No styling is carried out by the script itself, so you’ll have to add in some extra classes, but in the zip file should be everything you need to get started (including jQuery 1.3.2 minified).

You can download it here or view a demo online.