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Daily recipes to cook with Photoshop
How to: batch resize pictures
Resizing pictures can be a very boring task. Let’s say you want to upload a whole set of pictures on the web. You don’t want to waste time opening, resizing, saving and then closing every picture you have to resize, do you? Luckily with Photoshop actions you only have to do it once!
We all have things we do regularly with Photoshop, or things we want to do on a complete set of pictures and not just to one. That’s when Photoshop actions come in handy. They are an easy way to do repetitive tasks easily.
Let’s take an example: resizing pictures. Let’s say you want to upload a whole set of pictures on the web. You don’t want to waste time opening, resizing, saving and then closing every picture you have to resize, do you?
With Photoshop actions you only have to do it once. Here are the steps to manage it:
- Open one of the pictures you want to resize..
- Look for the Actions panel on the right side of your photoshop work panel. if you don’t find it, go to Windows > Actions
- At the bottom of the Action panel, click on the New Folder icon, name the type of actions you will put in that folder, let say “resize”, then new action icon, and name your action (let say “resize 500px wide”). Once you have done it, click Record. from that moment, everything you do is recorded.
- All we have to do now is resize one of our pictures. for that, open your pictures, then go to Image > Image size…, and change the width of your picture to the one you wish.
- Then go to File > Save.
- Your image is now resized and saved, we can stop the action. Click on the stop button in the actions panel, and that’s it, our action is created.
Now how to apply this action to a complete set of pictures ?
- Go to File > Automate > Batch…
- Select the folder where your pictures are.
- Select the destination folder.
- Click OK.
And that’s it, your pictures will open one after another, resized and saved. As easy as that!
Mar 30 at 19:22
AWESOME!
Mar 31 at 08:54
Indeed, Photoshop does the trick, but have you ever seen BIMP, a small software package dedicated to batch resizing, with a lot of options… AND.. freeware.
grtz,
Tom.
h
Mar 31 at 09:09
@Tom Hermans:
Here at PsdRecipes we focus on Photoshop tips, but a sure thing is that many other quality tools can make the designer life easier! I’ll have a look at Bimp, thanks for letting us know!
Apr 01 at 19:52
Great tip indeed. It’s good to have such action in photoshop, as not everyone likes to have separate programs for specific jobs like this one, which really can be time consuming.
Apr 01 at 22:58
Wow, really nice one here. This helped me immensely, as I just had to resize 20+ images. Thanks.
Jun 16 at 11:23
This site is perfect! Especially for folks new to PhotoShop. This is a great feature that I use almost everyday.
Jun 20 at 13:24
hi ….
i’ve one doubt how can i convert action file into script file
.ATN to .jsx file
Jun 20 at 13:25
i am creating a actions file and how can run tat action file and any way to convert .atn file javascript file
Jun 22 at 11:53
I am not sure I get what you want to do here, muthuvasagan. You do not need to convert the action file to be able to use it. When you save the action in Photoshop, it creates an .atn file, that you can use right away!