Wanted: An Easy-To-Use 'Batch' Editor

[aaron_w.]

While 35mm photography has been my hobby for many years, digital

photography is very new to me. That said, I recently took a Sony

Cybershot with me on vacation shooting about 500 pictures. Upon

returning and transferriing those images to my PC, I noticed that a

great many of them have a greenish tint when displayed on my

monitor.

 

My objective is to to share the best of my pictures with family and

friends (via a 'digiital slide show'), which they can view on their

PC's monitor (or TV). But before doing that, I really need to

correct the greenish-cast. Therefore, I'm looking for an easy-to-

use editor that would facilitate my making the necessary correction

in a batch manner (ie., correcting all of the images within a given

folder at the same time). Any advice or recommendations would be

most appreciated.

[pmac]

<p>As mentioned on the PW Pro thread, make sure that the images actually do have an inherent green cast, and it's not your monitor or color management making em look that way.</p>

 

<p>If you have access to another camera, load some shots from that, see how they look.<br> If you have access to another computer, see if the images look green on that.<br>

Upload a couple here to PN and see if members notice a cast.</p>

[lex_jenkins]

To start out with try Picasa and Irfanview. Both are free and each offers certain unique capabilities.

 

Both can handle most common file types, including RAW files. Irfanview probably handles a greater range of file types, including PNG and some fairly obscure types - very handy for converting older graphics files to something handier to use today.

 

Picasa is closer to a complete image editing package, with one-button automatic tweaks and sliders to fine tune adjustments. It also offers a handful of special effects that you may like or may find cliched. I like some of them when used in moderation.

 

It also has a very handy utility for creating slide shows on CD. The slide shows autorun on Windows PCs but not on Macs. However the JPEG files can be used on either computer or by Kodak or Fuji/Aladdin kiosk to make prints.

 

Picasa's drawback is that it is resource intensive. In default mode it always runs in the background, continually making inventory of almost every image saved on the computer (other, I think, than in the Windows Temp folder). So unless you have at least a Pentium 4 or equivalent and 512 MB RAM, you'd probably want to turn off this option or limit it to specific folders.

 

Irfanview, in contrast, is very compact, fast on any PC, even a 90 MHz Pentium 1, and runs only when called. It loads very quickly so, unlike Photoshop Elements (which loads painfully slowly), you won't feel like you need to keep it open when you don't actually need it.

 

Both programs handle batch processing but Irfanview does it a bit faster. The problem is that Irfanview's image enhancement adjustments are a bit primitive and there's no histogram display, which Picasa does offer. Sharpening is about equal on both, meaning not very good - global sharpening only, which tends to emphasize noise. It's okay for low noise photos intended for web display or small prints, tho'. And when used in batch mode Irfanview's sharpening can be reduced to produce less noise.

 

Irfanview makes certain tasks very easy, such as pasting together a series of photos horizontally or vertically. Handy for action sequences.

 

And Irfanview holds the edge over Picasa in terms of final output. Irfanview allows saving any compatible file type as any other file type available to the program. That means you can use it in batch mode to simply convert a mess of RAW files to TIFFs or PNGs. Picasa, as far as I can tell, allows saving only in JPEG format.

 

So I consider both useful. I use Irfanview to batch convert my Nikon NEF (RAW) files to TIFFs for noise reduction in Noise Ninja (which does not yet recognize RAW files). Nikon's own Capture software is much slower for batch processing and its noise reduction filter isn't as good as Noise Ninja or Neat Image.

 

However Picasa is excellent for producing a run of slide shows on CD for family and friends. I ran off a batch of a dozen or so for some theatre friends after photographing one of the performances.

 

After you've tried Irfanview and Picasa you'll have an idea of what you'd really want from a digital photo editor that you'll have to pay for. Lots of folks recommend Photoshop Elements at around $100 but, frankly, I find it to be a pain in the neck. For the same price I prefer Jasc/Corel Paint Shop Pro or even Picture Window Pro from Digital Light & Color. All of these programs are available as limited time free trial versions from the publishers' websites. You'll want a DSL or similarly fast connection, tho' - these are large program files.

[aaron_w.]

Paul~ I'm pretty sure that the problem is in the image itself and not my monitor, because I've examined quite a few images on pbase.com and there's no green-tint when viewing them on my

monitor.

 

Since I learned (on the PWP forum) that PWP does not facilitate batch processing, I've just installed the Photoshop Elements 3 tryout, but at this point I don't know yet if that's the best software for the job.

 

~Aaron

[aaron_w.]

Lex~ Thanks for those suggestions - they are much appreciated... As I indicated in my reply to Paul, I had already downloaded and installed Photoshop Elements 3 and now I've done the same with Picassa 2.

 

All things being relatively equal, I would naturally prefer the free software, but so far I don't see how to do batch corrections in Picassa. If that's doable, please explain how... I also find it confusing at the very get-go; for example, how do I get it to open the image-folder I'm interested in (which is on another disk-drive)?

 

I have a relatively powerful PC (2.8GGz P4 with 1GB RAM), so I'm not really concerned about Photoshop Elements' or Picassa's performance but I'm curious if there are other reasons you don't particularly care for Photoshop Elements 3?

 

~Aaron

[phil_v.]

Aaron:

 

I highly recommend an inexpensive (about $30US) product called "DCE AutoEnhance", which is primarily designed for batch processing...

 

http://www.mediachance.com/dce/index.html

 

I believe it is exactly what you're looking for (and since it's 'shareware', you can evaluate the full product for 30-days before buying)!

 

Cheers,

Phil

[lex_jenkins]

Aaron, here a few Picasa tips:

 

1. To set media and image detection to your preferences, click on "Tools", then "Options". The choices on the "General" tab are pretty self explanatory.

 

For example, "Automatically detect media" will automatically prompt you to begin transferring image files whenever your digital camera is plugged into the computer or a media card is plugged into a card reader. With Windows XP this usually runs without a hitch. Older Windows versions required jumping through a hoop or two. Picasa does about as well at media detection and file transfer as Nikon View and since it's faster overall, I don't use Nikon View too often anymore.

 

2. Picasa will prompt you to name file folders as you transfer them. By default they're displayed in descending year order, and date order within each year's section.

 

3. By default Picasa shows RAW files without any modifications, regardless of how the camera was set, so if you shoot RAW (NEF) and JPEGs simultaneously as I often do, it's easy to evaluate the two versions side by side.

 

4. There are a couple of ways to handle batch processing.

 

a. Click on a folder, then "Edit", the "Select All". This will place thumbnails of every photo in that folder in the Picture Tray at the bottom left corner.

 

b. Click on individual files, using the usual Ctrl-Right Click or Ctrl-Shift-Right Click method.

 

c. Since a single inadvertent misclick can deselect all of your files in the Picture Tray, I'll usually click on the Star icon after highlighting all of my selections. This way if my finger twitches the wrong way I haven't lost track of all the files I wanted to edit. I just go back to "Edit" and "Select Starred". You can remove the star icons from the photos anytime you like. They aren't permanent and they don't appear on saved JPEGs or prints. They're just a marker.

 

5. Basic edits. Start with a single image. Double click on it. You should now be looking at the editing screen. At the top left you'll see three tabs, "Basic Fixes", "Tuning" and "Effects". For now, keep it simple. Click on the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button. Sounds goofy but it's often effective. Evaluate the overall color and contrast. For extra help, click on the multicolored beanie icon at the lower right to turn on the histogram display. (I have absolutely no idea why they chose a propellor beanie icon for this.) Based on the histogram and overall appearance, you might want to click on Auto Contrast, Auto Color and use a bit of Fill Light, which primarily affects shadows and low midtones. Finally, if you want to sharpen it, click on Effects and the Sharpen button.

 

Nearly done.

 

6. To output the file you'll want to save a copy. Picasa never saves over the original file. That's good. Unfortunately it has an annoying file organization method which makes it a bit difficult to track down edited files later, especially with any program other than Picasa. That's not so good.

 

(Nuts, my PC or DSL keeps freezing. I'm going to have to wrap this up and finish later.)

[aaron_w.]

Phil: Thanks for the tip on DCE AutoEnhancer, I'll try it out.

 

Lex: That's very helpful (I can't wait for 'chapter 2')!

[lex_jenkins]

I'll try not to forget to finish this reply, Aaron. While trying to disinfect the PC of some spyware/adware, I apparently skronked something that Picasa needs to run properly. So I've disabled Picasa temporarily while I sort things out. I may have to reinstall it later.

 

Usually I run one spyware/adware detection program in the background at all times and manually run two others at least once a week, but something sneaked in that isn't in the databases for any of these detection programs. It looks like some sort of toolbar that won't go the hell away. It gave the impression of being similar to Picasa, but is much more resource intensive, bogging down the PC, and some bits of it refuse to be deleted.

 

Anyway, it's not the fault of Picasa. I've been using it on two different PCs for a couple of months and have had no problems with it.

[aaron_w.]

Lex~

 

If your problem is spyware, give Ewido a try.. It won't cost you anything and it has helped me find and delete spyware that some other products couldn't find...

 

http://www.ewido.net/en/download/