RAW Batch help

How easy is it, if at all possible to convert raw images from one WB setting to another in batch. I have 50+ images which were taken at the wrong setting and I now want to change all from "as shot" to "Custom", without the tedious task of going them individually. I'm using PS CS2. Many thanks.

You can do it easily from Bridge. That, and many more facts are found in this book.

If you're correcting your white balance in Camera Raw via Bridge, it's very easy to apply the settings in a single image to all the others. I'm at the beginning stages on CS2 as well, so I'll share with you what I've learned this week.

In Bridge, there are several ways to do accomplish your goal:

First, you need to select the files you want to batch together in bridge and open them all at once in camera raw. You can do this by selecting them in the thumbnail screen and doing control/command R. You should get one file in the Camera Raw preview window and the others on the left side. If you click "select all" and "synchronize" above all the thumbnails in Camera Raw, the changes you make to your main image will be applied to all the selected images as you go.

I prefer to leave select all/synch. unchecked, while I modify my first image. You can then select the rest and click synchronize for all the adjustments to apply afterwards.

A second method would be to open one image in Camera Raw, make your changes, and click done. If you return to your thumbnail preview page, you can right click (I'm on a pc) the corrected image and select "copy camera raw settings" which then allows you to select other images on which to "paste" your new settings. You can use shift/click to select as many images you want at once and apply your new settings that way.

This should get all of your images very close to each other quickly, and then of course, should you want to make add'l changes to individual images, you'll at least have the same starting point each time.

Dead easy. Put them all in one folder. Open the folder in Bridge. Select all and then open in Camera RAW. Once there pick the first shot and choose Synchchronise. You then change the WB to whatever you want and it will be placed on every shot.

I shot about thirty exterior shots for a magazine with the white balance inadvertently set to Tungsten on the camera. Because I only shoot RAW it was easily fixed with technique above.

One of my favorite concepts is the idea that "Your lost keys will be found in the last place you look for them." And that's a duh, because why would you look for them after you've found them?

Well I'm afraid that digital shooters found their keys about two years ago in the sense that they shot jpegs, they worked OK; and I was one of them. CF cards were very expensive and RAW converters either sucked (Canon) or were stupidly expensive (Phase One). Since then cards got cheap and RAW converters great (pick one). The problem is that I think a lot of photographers stopped looking for their "keys" two years ago. They shot jpeg because they had too, and it was OK, so now they haven't looked any further.

They have excuses like "It takes too long to process a bunch of RAW files", which from my experience is completely untrue and competely the opposite! Besides jpegs are only good IF YOU DON'T MAKE MISTAKES!!!! Try fixing that Tungsten problem with 60 screwed up jpegs! Try getting back some blown out jpeg highlights.

My feeling is that Canon introduced a RAW only camera as an option to the 5D (5DR?) I'd buy it in a second. Jpegs do nothing for me except clutter the menus. And if anyone out there is shooting jpegs please give a lot of thought to why you are, and possibly start a key search again.

There are reasons to shoot JPEG - ask some of our sports shooters and photojournalists, where there isn't time for the photographer to post-process all his or her own images, even when it's a couple of quick tweaks then batch processing. All that batch processing takes processor time and is more data to move around.

I can't see Canon introducing a RAW only camera - but maybe a custom function to disable all JPEG related functionality has a place.

David

It's trivial to do. Get this book.

You can use RSE to do this too, just before you convert.

I do know a lot of local photojournalists (I was one) and that's exactly what they say. And they're wrong. They say they don't have enough time to use RAW and then they spend twice as long as I would fixing a white balance problem they've had with a jpeg. The have enough time for that.

If they are using a 1D Mark II then they would have to really work hard to bury that thing's buffer, although I heard one pj worry over that. I shot my some action at my son's taeqwando class a while back and didn't bury the buffer in my 20D!

Besides you just have to think of their workflow. They don't send EVERY shot they take to the newsdesk. They send a few. And certainly wire shooters move no more than five to ten. How much longer can this take with jpeg than RAW? What REALLY takes time is the entering of EXIF information, as they hunt and peck away.

In Camera RAW, even if you don't batch change a bunch of things there's "Previous Conversion" that places the same changes on the next shot. I tend to shoot in bunches so that a group of exposures are similar. Using previous conversion means that I can get that next shot really close to where I want it with one click. How do you do this with jpgs? As soon as the image requires post production help then the jpeg workflow is much slower than RAW.

So they say that they have no time, but they've found their keys and have stopped looking. One of them will come over to RAW and then they won't look back.

"There's never time to do it right. But there's always time to do it over."

Many thanks for the replies. How simple it is to miss something as basic when trying to hard to read the whole. I just needed to backup a bit and slow down.