How to Edit Thousands of Images at Once in Photoshop with Batch Processing

How to Edit Thousands of Images at Once in Photoshop with Batch Processing
How to Edit Thousands of Images at Once in Photoshop with Batch Processing

Don’t waste your time doing the same thing over and over in Photoshop. This tutorial will show you how to apply the same editing to thousands of images at once in Photoshop using your own Actions with the Batch automation. You’ll learn how to create a basic Photoshop Action and learn how to run it within the Batch automation window so you can quickly edit tons of images. Get ready to cut your editing time in half!

What you'll be creating

In this tutorial we’ll create a Photoshop action that resizes the length of our images to 1000 pixels and then we’ll apply it to several images at once. Photoshop’s batch and action automation features have been available for a long time so you’ll be able to follow along in Photoshop CS3 or newer. There are a ton of free Photoshop actions here on Photoshop Tutorials that you can use to batch process your images using the same technique!

Final-Image

Tutorial Resources

Step 1

First create a new 2000px by 1500px document. This will give us a workspace to create our action and record our changes for the image size dialogue box later on.

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Step 2

Go to Window > Actions to open the actions palette. Click on the Create New Set folder icon at the bottom of the actions palette and name it “Resizing Actions.” You can move sets and actions around in the actions palette simply by clicking and dragging.

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Step 3

Click on our new Resizing Actions set to select it. We will create our action inside of this set so that we can save it for later. You cannot save actions out of Photoshop and open them on another computer unless they are in a set. Click on the Create New Action button and name the action “1000PX Wide

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Step 4

Click Record to start recording your action. Anything you do now will be recorded in steps within the action for you to playback later in the batch automation. Go to Image > Image Size and change the Width to 1000px. Make sure that the Scale Styles, Constrain Proportion, and Resample Image tick boxes are checked. Set the resampling dropdown menu to Bicubic Automatic. Click OK. Don’t worry about the Document Size settings since the action will only record the values for the tick boxes, the width value we changed and the resampling settings in the dropdown menu.

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27 comments on “How to Edit Thousands of Images at Once in Photoshop with Batch Processing”

  1. Hi, I have used this method in your tutorial for days, and only recently Photoshop keeps closing on its own after 308 photos. Is there an error with the software, or is there a setting I'm missing that allows me to process over 13,000 photos? Each time it crashes/closes after processing specifically 308 photos, which is annoying and time consuming as it already is. Hoping you have some ideas? Many thanks

  2. I don't understand why this is necessary. In my old Photoshop Elements 10, it was simple and straightforward! Right in the File menu, there was an option: "Process Multiple Files." Click on it, and away you go. Also, the option was far clearer and more capable--you could for example convert images to PNG. In my "current" edition of "full-version" Photoshop CC 2021, you cannot convert to PNG (you can only convert to JPEG). Adobe continues to butcher its own software and hence betray its customers. I have no faith nor regard for them now.

    1. Unfortunately, I don't think that's possible. Try doing it from File > Export > Save for Web (Legacy)... it might save it in a relative path when you're recording the action.

  3. Wow! have you done this in Photoshop? If so its really amazing work.I am working in editing task but not yet good enough like you. Good job indeed.

  4. Why is this so complicated? Why can't you just open a bunch of files in Photoshop and perform the same action on all of them? I don't have time to wrap my head around all this. PS has been around for decades, and they still don't have a simple command for this?

  5. Does this process same as like Photoshop action tool? In order to run the Batch processing we must have create the action first. Anyway thank you for the article.

  6. Wow! great It is undoubtedly beneficial to many. Basically, those who use only “Lightroom”, making such things, they will get an inspiration for using Photoshop.

  7. Really it is a great helpful post. It is undoubtedly beneficial to many. Basically, those who use only "Lightroom", making such things, they will get an inspiration for using Photoshop.

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