A friend just asked me if I had any software to resize photos, not knowing that Adobe Photoshop could do just that. If you have Photoshop installed, look no further. We’ll do something called ‘Batch Processing’ in Photoshop. It’s the same way how photos on Narrowband.org are watermarked and framed. It’s a pain to manually repeat the same steps for every photo, especially if you have more than 40 photos (in my Siem Reap photo gallery, there’re more 400!).

This tutorial is widely available on the internet, but I’m just going to share it here with Narrowband.org audience (I know for a fact that many among my friends do not know this). Here it is, step-by-step:

Step 1: Open a photo in Photoshop.

Step 2: Create a new Action in your Actions Window. (If you don’t know which is your Actions Window, hit ALT+F9 repeatedly).

Create New Action in Photoshop | Narrowband.org

A New Action window will pop out. Give your new Action a name, and click Record.

Create New Action in Photoshop | Narrowband.org

Step 3: Resize the photo by going to Image -> Image Size

size.gif

In my example, I want to put the photos on my blog. A width of 400 pixels will fit nicely within my blog body. The height value will change according to original proportions if you check “Constrain Proportions”. Click OK.

Step 4: Save the photo in a new folder (create one!) by going to File -> Save As…

Step 5: Close the photo by clicking the ‘X’ button.

Step 6: Stop the Action recording.

Stop Recording | Narrowband.org

Now, you’re ready to repeat the Action you’ve just created and apply it to the other photos.

Step 7: Go to File -> Automate -> Batch…

Batch Processing in Photoshop | Narrowband.org

Pick your Source folder (folder which contains all the photos you want to resize) by clicking Choose…. Specify also your Destination folder in the same way. In the figure above I’m gonna put the resized photos into a new folder called ‘Resized’. Click OK and watch.

There you go, 7 simple steps to save you time and trouble. Batch Processing in Photoshop allows you to record virtually any kind of actions (watermarking, photo-filtering, etc), and have them repeated and applied onto all files within a specified folder.

Note, however, you may need to separate (put into different folders) vertical photos from horizontal photos and create two separate actions for them. Also, since the Actions cannot be undone, I recommend that you always specify a Destination folder.

Have fun!

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