Batch Brightening of Photos Onsite

[Giles]

Hello,

I've got a sporting event coming up, and am looking forward to organizing my workflow around Photo Mechanic.

Part of the workflow is printing thumbnail books.  Because we're shooting in poorly lit arenas, the smaller images are darker than I'd like and we need to brighten them up for the books.  In the past, I've ran an 'auto correct' (basically an auto-levels) of sorts on a lower res copy of the images before printing the thumbnails.

I'm at a loss as to how I might best achieve this while staying within Photo Mechanic.  I'm currently playing with droplets as well as trying to find a command line application that would allow me to batch 'correct' some images.

Anyone have any first-hand insight?

[dbrouse]

The current version of PM doesnt have any image adjustment features. You can always create your contact sheets then run a Photoshop action on that JPEG or PDF file, the problem is that you'll be running that action on an ENTIRE page (not the individual images) so you would end up brightening the images are are correctly exposed. This is NOT a great solution, sorry.

[Giles]

dbrouse,

Yes, I considered performing a correction on a completed thumbnail sheet.  How can I get Photo Mechanic to print to a JPG that I can then run a Photoshop action on?

Giles

[Kirk Baker]

Yes, I considered performing a correction on a completed thumbnail sheet.  How can I get Photo Mechanic to print to a JPG that I can then run a Photoshop action on?

You can't.  It does not have that feature.  It has been requested already and will be addressed at some point.

-Kirk

[dbrouse]

I don't know if CameraBits has ever received this feature request...but yes it would be nice to be able to output JPG files (or PDF, the user selects the file type). Several other programs have this feature.  Plus, outputting JPG files will allow you to view them in current versions of PM. Even in future versions PM will only display a proxy for PDF files.

Personally I like viewing my Contact sheets in PM as JPG files like they are below...


[attachment deleted by admin]

[Giles]

...but yes it would be nice to be able to output JPG files (or PDF, the user selects the file type). Several other programs have this feature.  Plus, outputting JPG files will allow you to view them in current versions of PM.

Does anyone know of a JPG print driver? 

I've used an excellent PDF print driver, PDF995 (http://www.pdf995.com/).  Simply print to this driver through any application and you've got a properly formatted PDF file.  As an added bonus, it's currently free.  A JPG equivalent could prove to be, even if just for the time being, a possible solution.

However, in trying to solve the problem at hand, PDFs are not as practical as JPGs to manipulate in Photoshop, especially when trying to implement an action.

Regards,
Giles

[dbrouse]

Giles...you're right....PDF's are not practical. 

Try this:
http://www.zan1011.com/jpg.htm

http://www.bluechillies.com/list.html?k=virtual+printer+driver

http://www.downloadjunction.com/product/software/28258/index.html

http://www.freedownloadscenter.com/Best/jpg-printer.html

Do any of those work for you?


Delane

[johannesfleitner]

Hello,

pdfcreator ( http://www.pdfforge.org/products/pdfcreator ) can create PDF, PNG, JPG, TIFF, BMP, PCX, PS, EPS

"And the best: PDFCreator is free, even for commercial use! It is Open Source and released under the Terms of the GNU General Public License." - quote from their website.

regards
Johannes

[Kirk Baker]

Giles,

...but yes it would be nice to be able to output JPG files (or PDF, the user selects the file type). Several other programs have this feature.  Plus, outputting JPG files will allow you to view them in current versions of PM.

Does anyone know of a JPG print driver? 

I've used an excellent PDF print driver, PDF995 (http://www.pdf995.com/).  Simply print to this driver through any application and you've got a properly formatted PDF file.  As an added bonus, it's currently free.  A JPG equivalent could prove to be, even if just for the time being, a possible solution.

However, in trying to solve the problem at hand, PDFs are not as practical as JPGs to manipulate in Photoshop, especially when trying to implement an action.

Here are some printer drivers that can produce images:

Universal Document Converter: Windows only
ES Image Printer Driver Mac OS X and Windows

HTH,

-Kirk

[Giles]

Giles...you're right....PDF's are not practical. 

Try this:
http://www.zan1011.com/jpg.htm
http://www.bluechillies.com/list.html?k=virtual+printer+driver
http://www.downloadjunction.com/product/software/28258/index.html
http://www.freedownloadscenter.com/Best/jpg-printer.html

Do any of those work for you?

Delane

Thanks, I found a couple of those.  For what it's worth, I also found this one: http://www.dopdf.com/

Hello,

pdfcreator ( http://www.pdfforge.org/products/pdfcreator ) can create PDF, PNG, JPG, TIFF, BMP, PCX, PS, EPS

regards
Johannes

Thanks Johannes.  I know of PDFCreator.  Unfortunately, it does not currently work with Vista.  One of the frustrations that is making this a little more difficult.  Too bad; PDFCreator is an excellent program.

Here are some printer drivers that can produce images:

Universal Document Converter: Windows only
ES Image Printer Driver Mac OS X and Windows

HTH,

-Kirk

As always, thanks for your time.  Ultimately, I don't think this  direction is going to solve my problem.  A printed contact sheet does NOT auto-level very well, at least not as dramatic as individual photographs.  Too much info on the sheet: some images are good, some are dark, there is black type coupled with pure white space.  I'm guessing an auto-level doesn't see the entire sheet as a problem.

I'll have to approach this a little differently.  I'm playing with using PM to save a second lower res version of the files I wish to thumbnail in a \smalls directory.  From there, I zip into photoshop to perform an action on this folder.  Finally, back into PM where I print a contact sheet of the action-corrected photos.  Not very elegant or as automated as I would have liked, but for now, it's doing the trick.

I'm open to any other ideas...

Thanks everyone for the suggested utilities.  Although it may not prove to work in this instance, they still add some extra functionality to PM that I was previously lacking.

As always, the support in this forum is excellent.
Regards,
Giles