Hundreds of pics to edit! :(

[Stupendous Man]

I have almost 500 pictures I took of a recent MTB event. I am under a lot of pressure to get them published to the web!

Before I do, I want to tweak them up (if I can) Here is specifically what I want to do:
1) add a black border to each picture (like a frame)
2) add the festival logo and text "2007 MTB Fest" to each picture. The logo is a black-on-white design, that I want the white to become transparent.

I would like to do this to all the pictures, en masse, if possible!

Could someone please tell me if this can be done, and if so.....how?!??

I have photoshop elements 5, paint shop pro (v9 or 10 I think), corel photopaint v6 (ancient), and good ol' MS paint.

Tim

[drg]

Tim,
You can add borders with PSE5, but in terms of a mass/workflow editing I would believe you've not got enough software horsepower.

I regularly deal with shoot so this size and larger, and you need a workflow concept/tool etc.

First, how much time do you have? (hours, days, etc.)
Secondly, have you backed up all your work?
Third have you sorted out the keepers?

If you have accomplished that, one spec are you working towards in terms of size of finished image, where is the logo to be place in each photograph, and how are you planning on delivering the photos. This is all about size and handling. 150-250k web images are much easier to deal with than full sized DSLR or even high MP sensor p/s files. Depending on this question you may need to have a resizing step in the process.

If you have good enough quality files, you may just be able to get by with an "AUTO" adustment and some one step sharpening. A resized file always benefits from some sharpening (preferably the USM type or an advanced package like one from Nik).

In ADOBE products you'll need to generate an "action" to do the same thing to each photo including the stamping of the logo, but with the software you have I don't know of an easy way to cope with this many photos without some individual attention to each one.

If you are shooting all digital your camera may have come with a tool or so that would at least allow you to quick sort through the 'library' or 'collection' and make optimization 'en masse'.

Even if you have Adobe Photoshop Album it would give you more tools to work with a large collection of photos.

Otherwise it may be time for newer software or find someone to help. I'm not far from Peoria, but swamped with work at the moment.

Do feel to PM me or ask more questions and I and others here can perhaps guide you more quickly depending upon your time requirements.

I know this is not a 'perfect' answer to start, though we can refine what you need and go from there!

[poker]

Look up help files regarding ACTIONS in Elements. "Actions" automate task that you mention. Good luck.

http://graphicssoft.about.com/od/pse...qt/actions.htm

[jorgemonkey]

A good idea would be to backup all the photos, then go through & delete all the blurry ones & other bad shots. After that it looks like you can create actions in Elements, which you will praise Adobe for once you start using them.

Like drg said you can PM me if you need any more pointers, or you could ask on the board so others can see the answers

[Photo-John]

I have Photoshop and it's by far the most powerful and sophisticated editing software. However, for a project like this, I'd use something else. Personally, I keep going back to BreezeBrowser. If I need to batch-process a large number of photos, the Proof feature of BreezeBrowser is my first choice. The program is inexpensive and it can do pretty sophisticated batch processing, including applying a watermark, adding a border, sharpening, converting from RAW, etc. Right now, I think Adobe Lightroom is better. But it's also a lot more expensive and has a much steeper learning curve. Since time is money, I think some financial investment is justified. And I'd much rather use BreezeBrowser than Photoshop for this type of job. It will be simpler and faster. Plus, BreezeBrowser is also the best image browsing program I've ever used. No matter what I'm using for processing, I keep finding myself using BreezeBrowser for viewing RAW images and inital sorts.

[Stupendous Man]

Thanks for the suggestions....How much time to I have?? Well, people want them now (as usual) However, I did this on a completely volunteer basis, so I am technically under no deadline. As you can no doubt tell, I dont do much processing with my images other than simple cropping and so forth.

I will have to add a resize step in there. My pictures are all large JPEGs taken with a Nikon D50. I imagine I will chuck about a third of them, but that still leaves me with a few hundred to do.

So let me ask this...can someone walk me through how to add another image and some text as a watermark on a single image using elements 5? As far as batching them, I will either suffer through the good ones one at a time, or figure out something else on my own.

Tim

[Photo-John]

So let me ask this...can someone walk me through how to add another image and some text as a watermark on a single image using elements 5? As far as batching them, I will either suffer through the good ones one at a time, or figure out something else on my own.

I'm telling you - use BreezeBrowser for this. It's way better than Photoshop for a job like this. You can download a complete trial version for free and get the job done. It will be much easier than using Photoshop. It will resize too, and there's no need to create an action.

[Stupendous Man]

Thanks, I will try it out!

[Stupendous Man]

Thank You Photo-John!!! You were right about Breeze browser!! Wow, was that slick!! I got them all marked and uploaded and it only took me about 30 minutes. I wish the trial lasted longer than 15 days, but I may just be buying yet *another* imaging software package...

For the curious...the pictures (slideshow) are here:
2007 Midwest MTB Festival Slideshow

Tim

[Photo-John]

It's worth the money. I've got Photoshop on all of my computers, as well as Lightroom, Picasa, and some others. But like I said, for some tasks, and pure browsing and sorting, I keep coming back to BreezeBrowser.

Please post a review for it in our software reviews. We need your reviews!

Read and write BreezeBrowser software reviews >>

Glad my suggestion helped!

[artistic]

If you have photoshop CS2 or above use web Photo Gallery, makes quick work of making a site ready for upload.

[Stupendous Man]

Sorry for digging up this old thread, but I wanted to share another program that I recently found. Its called Picture Watermark, and as the name implies it does nothing more than watermark pictures. You can use images, text, exif data as watermarks. It has a large selection of fonts & styles & effects, like drop shadows, opacity, rotation, etc.. It works in batch mode, and is very quick. Thier website does a better job than I will at explaining all the features, but the nice thing is the price tag - $29.95