How to batch edit photos with phatch

If you want to resize a single image in Windows, you could open it in an application like Paint or Photos and make the change manually. But if you need to resize multiple images, this manual one-by-one method is incredibly time-consuming and inefficient.While there’s no simple way to resize multiple images using the built-in tools in Windows 10, there are a number of free third-party utilities that can do it for you. One of our favorites is Image Resizer for Windows, a nifty app that integrates directly into your right-click menu and offers a number of powerful options for image resizing and format changes. Here’s how to use it so that you, too, will never have to resize multiple images by hand again.

Resize Multiple Images with Image Resizer for Windows

To get started, head over to the Image Resizer for Windows website to download and install the application. Once it’s installed, you’ll see its options in the context menu when you right-click on image files.

Let’s show how it works with an example. In the screenshot above, I have a folder with six JPEG images of various sizes. I’d like to resize all of them so that their longest dimension is no larger than 1600 pixels. With Image Resizer for Windows installed, I can select all of the files, right-click, and select Resize Pictures.

This will bring up the utility’s options window. There are four preset size options—small, medium, large, and phone—and a custom option in which you can enter any dimension.

In the example above, I chose the custom option and enter 1600 x 1600 pixels. With the Fit option enabled, this resized the images to have their largest dimension be no larger than 1600 pixels while maintaining the image’s original aspect ratio. You can also choose Fill, which will ensure that the images’ shortest dimension reaches your desired pixel size while maintaining the original aspect ratio; or Stretch, which will discard the original aspect ratio and stretch the image to be exactly the pixel ratio you set. If you’re working with photos, it’s generally best to avoid the Stretch option, as it will distort the image if the pixel ratio you enter does not match that of the original image.

Beyond setting a desired pixel size, you can also choose to make pictures smaller but not larger, which avoids enlarging small images and degrading their image quality. By default, the utility creates new copies of the images to resize, preserving the originals, but you can elect to replace the originals instead if you’re sure you won’t need them later.

Back in the example above, I set the pixel size to 1600 x 1600, with the Fit option selected so that my files will retain their original aspect ratio. I also enabled the option to avoid resizing pictures that are smaller than my desired maximum size. With everything set, just click Resize and you’ll have your new batch resized images waiting for you.

As you can see in the screenshot above, based on the Dimensions column in File Explorer, the utility resized my images so that the largest dimension is no longer than 1600 pixels. In the case of file 3, however, it didn’t resize the image because its original dimensions were already smaller than 1600 pixels. Now, my images are the desired size and I’ve also saved quite a bit of space with most images seeing a greater than 10x reduction in file size.

Image Resizer Advanced Options

The default options in Image Resizer for Windows are suitable for most situations, but if you need more control over your batch image resizing and format conversions, you can click on the Advanced Options button in the utility’s interface.

In the new Advanced Options window that appears, you can modify the small, medium, large, and phone presets, or create a new preset entirely. You can also change the file format of your conversions. JPEG is the default, but it can also opt for BMP, PNG, GIF, or TIFF.

Finally, you can change the default file name for converted files. The default is to use the original file name followed by the resize preset name in parentheses, but you can choose to include the new dimensions, original dimensions, or create an entirely new file name.

The ability to batch resize multiple images in Windows seems like it should be something the operating system itself, or its built-in tools, could offer in a user-friendly way. Until that happens, Image Resizer for Windows is an excellent option that cleanly integrates into the File Explorer interface and offers users powerful resizing and conversion functionality for their images.

If you have ever needed to edit a whole folder of photos with the same effect or need to repeatedly crop, add watermarks, or drop shadows to images for the web, Phatch is the tool for the job. Phatch is a photo batch editor written in python so it works on any operating system.

Install Phatch

Phatch is available in the package manager of most Linux distributions. If it is not available you can download installation files from the Phatch website or source code from launchpad. In Windows and OS X things are a bit different and you will need to install all dependencies and launch the phatch.py script manually. Links and download zip with all dependencies for Windows can be found below.

Use Phatch to Edit Your Pictures

When Phatch is opened it looks more like a buddy list window than a photo editor. The first thing to do is click on the plus sign to add an action.

The first action to add should always be save. It is important to make sure save is on the bottom of the list because actions run in order from top to bottom.

When save has been added to the action list, there will be more options for filename, type, and location. Some file formats will add more options to the save action if they are available.

Even if the photo does not need editing, Phatch is still a great conversion tool with a plethora of available file formats it can read and write.

Now that the save action is on the list, click the plus sign again to add more to the action list. Each photo edit is its own action, so if the photo needs a watermark and a drop shadow, separate actions will need to be added.

Use the up and down arrows to change the order the actions will run, and make sure there is at least one save action at the bottom of the list. Phatch also can use external programs such as Blender and Imagemagick if those programs are installed.

Note: If you need multiple copies of the same file (eg. web thumbnail and full size image) you can have multiple save actions anywhere on the list. But remember the action list is processed from top to bottom. So don’t create and save your thumbnail before the full size image.

Click the action list menu to save and easily repeat these steps later on any pictures. Action list are stored in .phatch files which can be opened on any platform to have identical photo edits every time.

If an action needs to be temporarily disabled, right-click on the action item and then disable it. Disabling skips that action when processing the list. This can be helpful if an image already has a watermark or drop shadow and doesn’t need to be processed again.

To run the action list, click on the gears icon or push Ctrl+Return and another dialog will pop up for a location of files or folders and options to overwrite images, include subfolders, and what filetypes to process. Click Batch and the action list will run and save in the location you specified.

Here is a few examples of photo edits we created quickly with a photo of a friends car.

Phatch Image Inspector

Phatch also comes with an image inspector which can show the EXIF and IPTC information from the image. To launch the image inspector, click on the magnifying glass in the main Phatch window.

Drag an image to the window to see its attributes and tag information.

Phatch is a powerful photo editing tool that can repeat common photo edits in a snap; it is also free and cross platform which makes it even more valuable when working with the web from multiple machines.

Author: Dmitri Popov

Virtually any photo manager lets you perform mundane tasks like adjusting contrast, adding a watermark, and applying effects to your photos. But even powerful applications like digiKam and F-Spot can’t really help you when you need to perform the same action (or a sequence of actions) on dozens or hundreds of photos. For that you need a batch processing utility like Phatch. This nifty tool can perform no fewer than 35 different actions on your photos, and its user-friendly graphical interface makes it easy to create advanced multistep batch rules.

If you are using Ubuntu, installing Phatch is as easy as downloading its .deb package and double-clicking on it. A source tarball is also available. If you want to be able to view EXIF and IPTC data, you should also install the python-pyexiv2 package, and for “cool Nautilus integration” Phatch’s Web site recommends installing the python-nautilus package.

Unlike conventional image editing applications, Phatch doesn’t allow you to edit photos directly — instead, you use it to set up actions. An action in Phatch is a single operation that the application performs on the photos that are fed into it. Each action offers a number of options: for example, the Scale action allows you to specify the width and height, resolution, and resampling algorithm. You can add as many actions as you like. The project’s wiki provides a list of all the actions supported by the Phatch.

To add an action to Phatch, press the Add Action button and select the desired action from the list. You can narrow the list to a specific action type by selecting a category from the Select drop-down list. Alternatively, you can use the Search feature to search for a particular action.

As an example, choose the Scale action and press the Add button. This adds the selected action to the main window. You can then use the available options to tweak the action. For the Scale action, for example, you can choose to scale down the photo by a specified percentage value or to a predefined size measured in pixels. If you wish to change the image resolution or resampling algorithm, you can do so by adjusting the appropriate options. Once you are satisfied with the settings, you can add other desired actions. Finally, you have to add the mandatory Save action; without it, Phatch wouldn’t know where to save the processed photos. Besides options such as output format and quality, the Save action also offers a set of variables that you can use to specify a destination for the processed photos. For example, the default folder_phatch/subfolder variable tells Phatch to save the processed images in a separate folder inside the source directory. The root/phatch/year/month/day variable creates a directory structure based on the current date.

You can rearrange the actions in the list using drag and drop — except for the Save action, which must always be the last action on the list.

To process photos using the created action list, press the Execute button, choose the directory containing the photos you want to process, and press the Batch button. Once Phatch finishes, you should see the processed photos in the destination directory.

While using the Execute command every time you want to run photos through Phatch is not that difficult, the application offers another feature that makes the batch process even more straightforward. Choose View -> Droplet, and Phatch turns into a floating icon. Drag photos onto it, and Phatch processes them using the currently opened action list.

Although Phatch is first and foremost a GUI tool, you can run it from the command line, so you can automate the batch execution and turn your computer into a batch photo processing server. You can find a detailed description of how to do this at Phatch’s wiki.

Categories:

• Tools & Utilities
• Graphics & Multimedia

Phatch is a simple to use cross-platform GUI Photo Batch Processor which handles all popular image formats. Phatch can batch resize, rotate, apply perspective, shadows, rounded corners, … and more in minutes instead of hours or days if you do it manually. Phatch allows you to use EXIF and IPTC tags for renaming and data stamping.

Phatch is an incredible tool to quick fire batch processing of photos. I use it most commonly to resize images to a fixed size, for example while uploading images its preferred to have a good resolution but not as high as what the digital camera provides. I use Phatch to reduce the resolution of the photos in the photo set and then upload the images. This saves a lot of time and bandwidth.

Using Phatch is simple but might confuse a newbie. Here is a simple startup guide to Phatch.

• Run Phatch and the screen below will show up.

• Click on the ‘+’ sign to add actions, you can choose from a plethora of options. You can use the resize option to resize images ect.

• Once the options are selected you will need to put a save option at the end, this will save the file for you. You can choose the name, format and other options here.

• Hit the rocket ship button to start processing. A dialog will ask you details of the file to be processed and where it must be saved. Once done hit the ‘Batch’ button and wait till Phatch tells you its done processing the images.

To install Phatch on Ubuntu, use the following command:
sudo apt-get install phatch

You can download the installation file for Windows and other Operating Systems here

Whether you’re a professional or not, it’s quite likely that, from time to time, you’ll have to edit a group of files. Individual editing is out of the question, because we are talking about dozens or hundreds of photos. So the solution in this particular case is to resort to the Photoshop batch processing feature, designed to automate a large variety of operations.

Watermark and Crop Multiple Photos at Once

In order to edit multiple images simultaneously you have to record an Action, save it and then apply it to your batch of files. These are the steps you need to follow so that you can perform any type of edit, such as for instance cropping or adding a watermark:

Step 1 – Create a new Action

Once you’ve opened one of the images in the group, you need to create a new Action. You can do this by going to Window > Actions and then by clicking on the “create new action” icon located at the bottom of the Action panel. Once the windows pops up, give it a meaningful name like Watermark or Crop and hit the Record button.

Step 2 – Edit your picture

From here on out every step you take is being recorded until you ask the program to stop. So now you can begin performing all the edits you want, in our particular case cropping the picture or adding a watermark.

Step 3 – Stop recording

Once you’ve performed all the edits you wanted on your image, it’s time to stop recording. You can do this by going to the Actions panel and hitting the square icon that says “stop playing/recording” located on the bottom left side.

Step 4 – Apply your action to the entire folder

Now you are ready to begin your batch processing. Go to File > Scripts > Image Processor and you’ll see a new window pop up. Here you’ll select the folder that contains the images you want to apply the recorded action to, as well as the output folder where you wish to save the freshly edited photos.

In the Preferences menu check the “Run Action” box , make sure you select the Default Actions set in the first box and the action you created from the second box. Now begin your batch processing by simply hitting the “Run” button.

Batch Resize and Convert Images

Let’s suppose you have an entire folder of photos that you want to optimize for web use. This may mean converting them to a popular image format, as well as reducing their considerable size.

In order to do that you can, of course, follow the steps we’ve previously mentioned: record a resize action, perform all the edits and then apply it to all the pictures. This would be one way of approaching the task, but there is another one available and quite simplified, as it doesn’t require creating an action. Here’s how:

Step 1

You can open the images you want to edit or not, this part is completely optional. Regardless of what you choose, go to File > Scripts > Image Processor and a new window will open up with 4 sections you need to follow.

Step 2

In the first section of the Image Processor dialog, select the batch of photos you want to apply the edits to. You can do this by clicking on the Select Folder button.

Step 3

In the second section of the window, select where you want your new images to be saved. You can opt to Save in Same Location, in which case Photoshop will automatically create a folder inside your initial folder, or choose a new output folder to save your pictures.

Step 4

In the third section is where you perform all the resizing and converting edits you intended. First you can choose the exact image format you desire by saving as JPEG, PSD or TIFF. The Quality of the image ranges from 0 to 12, but it’s advisable to set it to 8 or higher. Check the Resize to Fit box and enter the new dimensions for the Width and Height in pixels.

Once everything is properly set and you’ve made sure the check mark of the Run Action is removed in the fourth section, just hit the Run button in the top right corner of the window.

Batch editing photos is an optimal solution if you’re looking to significantly improve your workflow. This is the ideal process in case you’re dealing with multiple images that require the same type of adjustments. You can’t really afford to individually resize, rotate or crop each photo in a batch of 50 shots. It would take up too much of your time and energy.

There are plenty of programs that allow you to edit multiple images simultaneously. But what if you don’t want to install another software on your computer? Well, there’s absolutely no problem. You can accomplish this task online. In this article we’re going to show you how to edit photos online in bulk in a simple way. Below you can find a list of browser-based tools you can effectively put to use to automate the editing process:

BatchPhoto Espresso

BatchPhoto Espresso is a free online photo editor with batch processing capabilities. The tool is super-easy to use thanks to its three-step concept. All you have to do is add your pictures in Step 1, apply the desired edits in Step 2 and choose your image format and quality in Step 3. That’s all there is to it.

In terms of editing, BatchPhoto Espresso places at your disposal a large variety of options. You can optimize images for web use by resizing, cropping or rotating them, retouch them by adjusting the contrast, brightness and saturation, sharpen them or reduce the noise. You can also apply various special effects to them, such as black & white, charcoal or sepia. There are previews available for every step of the process.

PhotoSize

PhotoSize is an interesting solution to reduce image size online in batches and free of charge. The tool comes with an easy-to-navigate interface that makes it easy to familiarize yourself with the way everything works. Simply load your photos, apply the desired filters and then select your saving configuration. Previews are available so you can visualize in real time the changes made.

PhotoSize is indeed designed for batch resizing images online and offers various options in this regard, but this is not the only operation it can perform. The tool can help you further optimize and improve the overall appearance of your shots. For that purpose you can rotate, crop and convert them to popular formats, add text comments, retouch them in terms of brightness and colors, as well as apply artistic filters.

BeFunky

BeFunky is an all-in-one online photo editor. This multipurpose tool enables you to edit your pics, make collages and also create a wide range of graphic designs. The image editor is quite rich in features and offers you the opportunity to easily edit multiple photos at the same time. The downside is that the batch processing feature is not free and you’ll have to sign up for a monthly subscription.

With BeFunky you’ll be able to batch edit your pictures in various ways in order to create stunning imagery. This browser-based tool gives you the chance to resize and crop them, make adjustments to the levels, exposure and colors, improve the clarity or correct the lens distortion. At the same time you can apply a wide range of artistic filters and cinematic effects like vignette, warped blur, old photo or vintage.

iLoveIMG

iLoveIMG places at your disposal plenty of features to edit images in bulk online and free of charge. The tool comes with a truly intuitive design, which makes it quite easy to use regardless of your editing skills. It’s also worth mentioning that you can upload images not only from your computer, but also from Google Drive and Dropbox.

So, what exactly can you do with iLoveIMG? Well, the software offers you options to compress, resize, rotate, crop and convert images, including from HTML to JPG or SVG. If you want to protect your original content, the tool enables you to batch watermark photos using either a logo or text. There’s an additional photo editor available with various retouching options, but you can only add images one by one.

Watermark.ws

Watermark.ws is primarily designed to help you protect your online content. This includes not only your photos, but videos and documents as well. The tool comes with a free version, which allows you to process one file at a time. In order to be able to process multiple files at once, you’ll have to pay a monthly subscription fee.

Watermark.ws has a clean and clear design. In the first phase of the process you import your photos from your computer or from the cloud, edit them in the second phase, while in the third you can select one of the numerous export options. It’s important to mention that the tool isn’t restricted to watermarking. In the same editing session you can resize, flip, crop or rotate photos, add borders, adjust the exposure or apply diverse filters.

BIRME

BIRME stands for Bulk Image Resizing Made Easy. This free online tool was developed to help you resize multiple images at once in a simple and efficient manner. All you have to do is load the images from your computer and select the preferred dimensions for the width and/or height. You can also manually set an image focal point or allow the program to do it automatically.

BIRME gives you the chance to preview your photos before processing them and to select the image quality for your pictures. In addition to bulk resizing, you can’t really perform other useful operations. What you can do is to rename your images and add a border to them.

Bulk Resize Photos

Bulk Resize Photos is a simple online solution to reduce the size of your images in bulk. The tool is completely free and works in a simple mode: load your images, select the new file size or the new dimensions for the width and/or height and then click on the Start Resizing button.

The downside is that, besides reducing image size, Bulk Resize Photos only offers the option of converting images to a popular format like JPEG or PNG. For protecting or promoting your original photography you can resort to its sister tool, Batch Watermark.

Suppose you have 15 images you need to edit all in the same way. It would be tedious and time consuming for you to open and edit each image especially if the editing entails a lot of steps. Photoshop allows you record and save an action then apply this to a batch of images.

Creating an image export action

1. Open up the Actions palette by clicking on the Window menu > Action, and create a new set by clicking on the folder icon at the bottom of the actions palette. Call it “Batch Actions.”

2. Then create a new Action by clicking on the new action icon at the bottom of the Action palette, and give it a descriptive name, for example, let’s call it “AutoContrast-Resize”.

Your Action should now be recording, so anything you do from this point on will be included as an Action step.

Do all the editing you want to record such as adjusting the contrast of the image, resizing it if you want all of the images to be of the same height or width, then save the changes. When you’re done, you’ll see this new command listed in the Actions palette. If you expand this command, you’ll see all of the settings you’ve applied editing that photo.

After all the editing is complete, stop recording your Action by clicking on the stop icon on the Actions palette. Now you’re ready to batch process.

Applying the Action to a batch

Now apply this batch to a folder full of images. In this case, make sure all of the images you want to apply this action to are all contained in one folder. Here’s how that works.

1. Choose File > Automate > Batch.

2. At the top of the dialog that pops up, select your new Action from the list of available Actions.

3. In the section below that, set the Source to “Folder.” Click the “Choose” button, and select the folder that contains the images you want to process for editing.

Check the following options:
* Suppress File open options dialogs
* Suppress color profile warnings
These will suppress warnings that would otherwise interrupt the batch process.

4. In the section below that, set the Destination to “None.” This will allow you to use the destinations that you recorded in your Action, so that the photos will be saved in the same folder. (If, in the future, you want your images exported to a single folder, you can set the destination to “Folder,” then choose the destination folder on the fly in the Batch dialog.)

When you choose “None” as your destination, all other options in that section will be grayed out.

5. Now hit the “OK,” and Photoshop will begin processing your images.

Sometimes, the worst part of photography is the image editing that can stack up from importing large numbers of images. Luckily, with PaintShop Pro, you can skip the image editing tedium and apply bulk edits to multiple images at once. Working with bulk edits allows you to save incredible amounts of time by applying single edits to hundreds or even thousands of images. Keep reading to learn how to bulk edit images on your own.

1. Install PaintShop Pro

To install PaintShop Pro photo editing software on your PC, download and run the installation file above. Continue following on-screen instructions to complete the setup process.

2. Select Batch Process

Click File > Batch Process.

3. Add Photos

In the Batch Process dialog box, on the Add Photos page, click Add and choose the files that you want to process.

Click Next.

4. Select actions

On the Batch Actions page, choose any of the following actions:

• Add Info
• Watermark
• Resize
• Script — Enable the check boxes for one or more scripts. Enable Silent Mode to avoid displaying dialog boxes associated with scripts (interrupts batch to request user input).
• Picture Frame
• Smart Photo Fix

Note: To edit the settings for an action (scripts are the only actions that can’t be edited from the page), hover over an item you have added to the Add Batch Actions list, and click the Edit this action button that appears.

Click Next.

5. Modify Settings

On the Output Settings page, modify any of the following settings:

• Destination folder — Enable New and navigate to a folder location or enable Original to save back to the source folder
• Filename — To rename the files, enable Rename, click Modify, and choose an option from the Rename Options list, and click Add. You can rename the file with info such as current date or custom text. Note: If you are renaming files, adding the Sequence option ensures that each file will have a unique name and you won’t have naming conflicts.
• Naming conflicts — Enable the option that you want to apply in the event that two files have the same name.
• File Format — Choose a file format. Click Options if you want to modify the settings for the file format.
• Security features — Enable Delete EXIF information to remove all EXIF metadata from the processed files or enable Delete location information to remove any GPS coordinates. To add a Digimarc watermark, enable Embed Watermark.

Click Start to run the batch process.

Download a free trial now and start batch processing today

PaintShop Pro’s image editing tools allow you to quickly and easily batch process your images to speed up post processing.

PaintShop Pro does more than just image batch processing

Check out some of the other photo editing features in Paintshop Pro, like bulk image resizer, change image color, tone mapping, and more! Create high quality photos in a fun and easy to use photo editor and make your photos stand out more than ever.

Download the best solution for bulk editing photos that there is

If you need to edit a lot of photos but don’t want to do each of them individually, then you are in luck. We promise you’ll love the easy-to-use batch processing features in PaintShop Pro. Click below to download your free 30-day trial and bulk edit images for free before you buy!

Matthew Matthew is a freelancer who has produced a variety of software articles for sites such as Bright Hub. He has an A – Level in ICT, at grade C, and is proficient with a number of software packages. Check out his book at Battles of the Pacific War 1941 -1945 recalls where, when and how the Pacific War was won and lost within the battlefields of the Pacific. Read more July 1, 2016

If you have lots of photos to edit, you can edit the images in batches instead of one at a time. For example, let’s suppose you needed to convert a group of images to black and white. You can edit all the photos at once with a few software packages, and one of those is ImBatch 4.8 for Windows 10/8/7/Vista.

Click here to open the ImBatch Softpedia page from which you can add it to your hard disk. Press the DOWNLOAD button there to save its setup wizard, and open that to add the program to Windows. Then open the ImBatch window shown in the snapshot below.

Next, select a batch of photos to edit by pressing the Add new images for processing button. Then hold the Ctrl key, choose a few images to include in the batch edit and press Open. They’ll be included on the main window as below.

Press the Add Task button to open the window directly below. You can select a number of editing options to edit the images with from there. For example, you could select Sepia from the Colors menu to convert all the photos to sepia.

When you select the options, you’ll see a small thumbnail preview at the bottom of the window. That shows you the output with the selected editing options. Press the Toggle into scroll mode button to zoom in and out of the preview.

When you’ve selected the editing options, press the Run batch image processing button. That will open the window below stating that the original images will be overwritten. Press Yes to apply the editing to the batch of images and overwrite the originals.

To edit the images without overwriting the originals, select Add Task > Save and Save As to open the options shown below. Press the button right of the Folder drop-down menu to select a folder to save the photos to. You can also select a variety of file formats to save the images with from the File Type drop-down menu. Then click the Run batch image processing button again.

Then you can open your newly edited images in Windows. So with ImBatch you can now edit multiple photos more quickly than with software that doesn’t include any batch editing options.