Which software to use to correct/enhance images in batch ?

Hi all ... Well I attended that wrestling event last night that I talked about in a few other threads and took nearly a 1000 pictures with my FZ35 .. and to be honest, considering this was my first attempt at using manual camera controls and also that I was sitting like a mile away from the action, I am *really* impressed ! :) .. The camera is really very good, and this is actually convincing me to buy a full fledged beginner DSLR (maybe the Nikon D3100) to experiment and learn more :) .. The 18x zoom on the camera was awesome IMO, and I used it heavily .. And even at 18x zoom, the pictures very really very good !! :)

Anyways, I have some images which I'd like to maybe enhance in certain ways .. The improvements I seek are mainly the following:

1) Brightening up images that appear dark due to being shot at a fast shutter speed
2) Sharpening up images slightly
3) Fixing the contrast and colors, etc ..

Normally what I'd do to do the above is to just use Photoshop's Auto Color, Auto Tone, etc features to deal with 1 and 3, and manually do a high pass filter in overlay mode or soft mode to enhance sharpness ..

But doing this for every picture individually would be torture, so is there any way I do carry the above enhancements in batch ? Like I can sort pictures out according to the processes I want to apply on them, and to what degree I want to apply them on, and then run the enhancements in batch ?

Also, the techniques I mentioned above to do the corrections are just what I do .. I'm okay with trying anything new anyone can suggest here, just as long as it can be done in batch to some extent at least !

I also dont HAVE to use Photoshop .. In my work place I have all the latest Adobe programs and other big non-Adobe programs available at my disposal, so thats not an issue as well .. I just mentioned Photoshop because thats what I've mainly used for this purpose so far ... But I'm willing to look at other tools too, no problem ..

I will post some of the images I took for you all to see once I'm done processing them .. :)

Corel Photo Paint (X5) has a batch process capability. You first have to create a script (or scripts) to do what you want it to do. You then select the files you want to process, whether you want to overwrite (probably not), save as a new file, don't save, etc, then select the script(s). I haven't used it, but after checking it out I think I will expt with it :)

However ... I think you will have an issue with (2), sharpening, as every photo needs a different amt of sharpening. I know PS has a "sharpen" selection where it just does it for you, but in my experience it does a pretty crappy job and over sharpens... it would be best to select for each, and you can't do that in a batch. Same issue w/ Corel which doesn't even have a one-click sharpen capability (which I'm fine with).

G

Photoshop has Image Processor. On a Mac, it's under File> Scripts> Image processor. That may vary a bit for Windows. It's useful for processing an entire folder of images

You basically have two options from there. There's a box you can check to open the first image and apply settings, and those same settings are applied to the subsequent images, OR you can create an action, and run it from within Image Processor.

- Joe U.

If you have photoshop, you probably also have bridge. you can open bridge, surf to the folder, select all, right click and choose "open in camera raw". Adobe camera raw has the same batch adjustment capability as Lightroom. Just like image processor, you can correct the first one, hit the "select all" button at the top left, then the "synchronize" button just below it to apply these settings to the rest of your photos. I've done batches as large as 600 without choking the computer. (it also has "auto exposure" and "auto white balance")

I have found that Lightroom works good for batch processing.

I have found that Lightroom works good for batch processing.