Photoshop Elements 8 for Windows: The Missing Manual

Processing Multiple Files

If you're addicted to batch-processing your photos, then you'll love the Elements equivalent: Process Multiple Files. In addition to renaming your files and changing their formats, you can do a lot of other very useful things with this tool, like adding copyright information or captions to multiple files, or even using some of Quick Fix's Auto commands.

To call up the batch-processing window, in Full Edit, go to File → Process Multiple Files. You see yet another headache-inducing, giant Elements dialog box. Fear not—this one is actually pretty easy to understand. If you look closely, you see that the dialog box is divided into sections, each with a different specialty (see Figure 8-14).

Figure 8-14. You could call Process Multiple Files "Computer: Earn Your Keep", because it can make so many changes at once. This dialog box is set up to apply the following changes: Rename every file (from things like PICT8983 to basketball_tournament001, basketball_tournament002, and so on), change the images to PSD format, apply Auto Levels and Auto Contrast, and add the filename as a caption. You make all that happen just by clicking the OK button.

Tip

Process Multiple Files is the name of the command, but you can run it on just one photo if you want, although you'll usually find it easier just to do a regular Save As (see Chapter 2 for more about saving files). Just open your ...