Quite often we are asked to build websites with photo galleries for our clients. They want the ability for people to see their club or restaurant when there is a party going on, and to see what kinds of people generally show up. Photo Galleries are a fun way to showcase a club or restaurant in a casual and candid way. People who view the websites gallery are generally wanting to know what they should expect when they show up - what kinds of people come to the club and what they should wear. Is this an upscale club where I will be dancing all night or a place I can go to hang out at the bar and relax?

The biggest problem that comes up are the initial images that are sent to us to post onto the gallery from the client. These photos of parties and crowds are generally shot over the last few years and have collected on a main computer somewhere or on multiple CDs they have been keeping. The problem is that these images come in all different sizes and in all different formats and they are mixed-up horizontal and vertical images. Mixing up the horizontal and vertical images makes resizing using Photoshop Actions pretty much a pain.


Finally the other day I got sick of it and decided that I was going to find a better solution. I searched and found a few old ideas using actions, but none of them worked very well. They left files open for you to "edit" or would not save to the appropriate folders. After MUCH trial and error I decided to make up a better way using a few tricks I found while searching. I am going to use both actions and Image Processor to get the results I want.

The first problem with automatic resizing of images is that you can't resize to an exact number. Since Photoshop cant decipher if an image is horizontal or vertical then setting a specific size of 1024x768 or 800x600 will only give you a bunch of vertical images that are badly stretched out to fit that size. The trick is to not set a specific Width & Height, instead set a specific Height. Now, you might ask "well I can set a specific Width right?" WRONG!! The problem with this mathematical flaw is that if you have an image that is 2304x3027 and you change the width to 800px then you get an image that is 800x1067 and this is much too high for the average 1024x768 monitor depth. So, what we do is work with the smaller number 600px high and the width will fit accordingly. If we just set the height to 600px high, then we get an image that is 450x600 which is exactly what we were looking for with a vertical image. An image that can be large, but still completely fit on a typical screen - perfect for a galleries enlarged image.

Enough with the theory though, lets get down to it. How do you resize pictures easily in Photoshop CS2 & CS3 when you have hundreds of them both horizontal and vertical?

Part One: Creating the Action
The action we are going to use needs to be created so we can use it for the Image Processor later

1. Open an image you want to resize in Photoshop CS2 or CS3
NOTE: This image is going to be used strictly to make the action, so it doesn't matter what it is.

2. In the Actions panel make a new folder called "gallery resizing"



3. Create a new action, and call it "600px High".
NOTE: I would recommend making one of these actions for all of the major web sizes to streamline your future work ie: "768px high" and "480px high"

4. While the new action is recording, go to image > image size...

5. Change the DPI to 72DPI and the Height to 600px and click ok
NOTE: Most mainstream digital cameras shoot at a 4:3 ratio, so this will make a horizontal image 800x600 automatically
















6. Stop the action recording




7. At this point you can close the image - you don't have to save the image, we are finished with it


Part Two: Using Image Processing

1. Go to Scripts > Image Processor




2. Select the Folder of the images which are too large (horizontal & vertical mixed in is perfect)

3. Leave the "Save in Same Location" checked. This will create a new folder in your original images folder called "JPEG" and will not overwrite your original images.
NOTE: in the thumbnail I used a folder to send the images to - this is not necessary

4. Check the Save as JPEG box and set your quality. I set mine to 4 because I found it was a good file size for web for my images. This is something you can play with to get the results you need.

5. Under the "Preferences" section check the run action box and select the "gallery resizing" folder, then select "600px High" action.

6. Click "Run"




At this point the images will start to quickly open in Photoshop, resize and close themselves. This is exactly what you want and depending on the amount of images you have, this could take a few seconds to a few minutes to complete. Once its finished (or while its running) check your new "resized" folder to make sure its outputting the images the way you want.

I hope this helps out anyone who needs an easy way to resize pictures for photo galleries. This really helps me out a lot and saves me a ton of time when we make galleries now, I even did a lot of my personal pictures to test it out, and haven't had a flaw yet. If I missed anything, leave me a comment, and I will get it fixed right away.





tags: photoshop,, image,, resizing,, photo