How can I easily convert a large number of pictures from RAW to scaled down JPG?

Question

I have a collection of shots from the same session in RAW and want to covert all of them to JPG. Each one should have a curve applied, then be scaled and sharpened using the same settings.

What is the best way to do this? Can I automate PhotoShop (or alternative) to perform the same steps over a number of pictures?

Answer 1

Open your folder containing the photographs in Adobe Bridge, then in the menu go: "Tools" -> "Photoshop" -> "Image Processor". (Entries translated.)

Set your JPEG quality and maximum resolution per side (aspect ratio will be retained), click go and wait.

Note: Bridge comes with Photoshop for those who do not know that.

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Also, if you want to apply similar settings to all photographs, you can copy over settings in Bridge. Right click the RAW and it is an option in the second level of the menu.

Answer 2

For quickly converting and resizing images I use Faststone - very quick and freeware.

http://www.faststone.org/

Answer 3

On windows for Canon: Digital Photo Professional. GUI application.

On Linux for any camera: dcraw + the ImageMagick package and a little work in shell.

Answer 4

Aperture 3 could be used for batch conversion. You import the RAW pictures into a library. When importing you could have a set of pre-defined settings. Choose Import Settings -> Adjusment Preset. Select the preset you like. If there is no one that you like, you could edit/create your own preset. During the import process it is also possible to do a backup of your files, which I think is handy. Of course you could do simple things like renaming pictures etc. When you have them all imported, you could export them at once or apply your adjustment.

The process is semi-automatic, you will have to select the settings before import and the choose your settings when exporting. If you want to automate everything, I suggest using the Automator application that is provided with Mac OS X.

I use Aperture 3 for batch processing and a like a lot. It is cheaper than PhotoShop. It is available for Mac OS X.

Answer 5

You can do so with Digikam.

Go to Tools > Batch Raw converter and add the files, then apply your curves and the like. (Tried with 2.0.0-rc, newest version is 2.5.0.)

Answer 6

ACDSee Pro is a good tool. It is available for Windows and Mac OS X. I used this for many years. It has good batch processing engine. It is very handy to do these type of batch conversion, batch re-size, batch rename, batch color correction etc.

Answer 7

You should be able to do this with Adobe Camera RAW. It's very fast and you can set some processing settings on it.

Drag and drop all of your RAW files to Photoshop and they'll open in Adobe Camera RAW. You can set the size and colour setting using the link at the bottom/middle of the screen.

Select all the images in the sidebar and apply the curves and processing settings you want and then use the 'Save Images...' button in the bottom left.