Photoshop® CS4 Bible

3.5. Processing Batches of Images and Repetitive Tasks

Making adjustments to a handful of images at a time is all well and good, but what happens when you want to apply a series of edits to a whole memory card full of images from Cousin Bertha's wedding in Hoboken last week? Having to make the trek to New Jersey was bad enough; spending your weekend having to make a bunch of repetitive edits only makes you resent poor Cousin Bertha even more. Instead, you can use the power of Bridge's batch-processing capabilities in conjunction with Photoshop's Actions to whip through large image collections in no time.

3.5.1. Batch renaming multiple images

Although it's not really an image-processing task per se, renaming a large number of images is one of the more tedious things that you'll find yourself having to do while organizing your photos, so I think it's worth covering here. Bridge's built-in, batch-renaming command is pretty simple to use and makes quick work of those often-cryptic "DSC0232.JPG" filenames that are generated by many digital cameras. To change the filenames of a group of images, follow the steps outlined below:

1. Select the images to be renamed. You can select specific images to be renamed by holding down Shift or Ctrl/.cmd;/) while clicking on them. If no images are selected, then all the images in the current Bridge window will be renamed. Choose Batch Rename from the ...