I had recorded a new Action in the “Actions Palette” when I discovered something very frustrating. Even though my original files were BMP’s and the ending file was supposed to be a BMP, the BMP options dialogue box would open at the end of every action, prompting me to hit OK. This is not convenient because it made me babysit the batch processing…which means that it wasn’t really a batch process.
What I did not realize was, in the course of creating my new Action, I should have gone through the “Save As” as my last step. It took me quite some time to figure out what was wrong, and this helpful Adobe Forum thread pointed me in the right direction: http://www.adobeforums.com/webx/.3bc401c5/21
“A ’save as’ command must be recorded at the end of the action. This results in the JPEG options box settings being written to the action. I could not get this to work with “save for web”, but it seems to me no flexibility is lost anyway. If I’m correct, you get all the same JPEG options.” – pdlr
I’ll break down the steps I used in totallity – from beginning to end, just so there is no confusion.
-Open Actions Palette
-Create New Action
(As soon as you name the new action, PS starts to record your steps, so make sure you have the file opened and ready that you want to record the actions on.)
-The last step in your new actions should be going through the File > Save As process to completion.
-Close file
-Stop the recording of actions in the Actions Palette
Then
- File > Automate > Batch
- Choose your source, and all the options you want. The most important part in this options dialogue box being the choice “Save and Close” and check marking the “Override Save As Options”
If you have a folder of hundreds of images, a good idea would be to try out the Action and Automate Batch on a folder containing 3 of the hundreds of images – just to make sure everything is turning out right. I made the mistake of not doing that once, and 3 hours later… well, it was not good.
Happy Batching!
