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Batch Creating Thumbnails in CS2
Hey there,
I have several hundred pictures that I need to make thumbnails for. I started out making an action to do it, but I can only resize, I can’t then make it save automatically (unless there’s way to do that?).
A side problem with this is that even with the JPG quality set to 1 the filesize is still much bigger than it should be. For example if I export it using Save For Web rather than Save As the difference is filesize is 28kb for Save As and only 2kb for Save For Web (choosing the appropriate option of course).
Is there a way to batch all of these thumbs AND have them use the Save For Web settings so the filesizes are all 2kb instead of 28kb?
Any info would be appreciated. Thanks.
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4 Replies
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Sure there is. You need to create a single action that resizes the picture and then saves it. Use save for web if this is giving you better results, but if you do then be sure that you save the file to the folder that you want all of the files output to (save for web doesn’t work as nicely with Batch processing). The action will record the save options that you use. Make sure that you’ve only recorded the image resizing and the save.
Now, make sure that you have all of the pictures you want to apply this action to in the same folder.
Then go to File > Automate > Batch. You’ll get a scary looking dialog (if you’ve never seen it before), but the important things to do are set the Action to be your newly recorded one, choose the source folder where all of the images you want to change reside (I also like to supress the file open option and color profile dialogs). If you used save for web then choosing a destination folder won’t do anything and the files will be saved to the location you chose when you recorded the action, otherwise if you used save as choose a destination folder and tell it to override save as commands and change the naming rules until you have what you want.
Then run the batch! That’s it.
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That works really great, thanks. I have some quick questions though:
I’d like to save the files with different filenames, IE:
Picture01.jpg becomes Picture01-tn.jpg
Picture02.jpg becomes Picture02-tn.jpgSo I rename it as -tn in the Save Dialog and then stop the action. Then when I run the Batch thing it tries to name them all as:
Picture01-tn.jpg
And then prompts me asking if I want to overwrite it every time instead of just appending -tn onto all of them. Any ideas how to fix that?
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The batch process has options for choosing the naming conventions of the saved files, but it doesn’t allow for everything.
In the Destination section under File Naming you can see an Example of the way your files will be named, you can change the first part to ‘Document Name’ the second to ‘2 digit serial number’ and the last to ‘extension’ to end up with something like ‘ReallyCoolPicture01.jpg’ for your first picture and ‘AnotherAwesomePicture02.jpg’ for your second.
When you record the Save for Web action, don’t change the name of the file or it will record that name as the name to use when saving every file you apply the action to.
Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Aptos, CA -
Good advice. Thanks!
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