Hello, support!
I have close to 500 pictures (in different sub folders) which I need to resize and add a watermark and I want to keep the pictures in the same location and overwrite the existing pictures. I have several folders and sub folders so would like to maintain the file structure and keep renamed pictures in their original folders and keep the pictures' original names. I have manually made a copy of the original pictures so don't care if these are overwritten. Is this something I'll be able to do? Thank you.
'Save As', the tool you'd need to resize/add a watermark will never overwrite images, so it will never be possible to do this in a single step. However, I'll share some tips on how I think you could accomplish this.
First, to work on multiple folders without moving the files from where they currently are, you can do this in one of two ways:
1) If the folders you want to work on are all contained within a parent folder, right-click on that parent folder and choose "Open Folder and subfolders in new contact sheet"
2) If the folders you want to work on are scattered about, double-click on one of them to open a new contact sheet, and then hold the option key (on Mac) or Shift (on Windows) while double-clicking on the other folders you'd want to work on, and the images from those other folders will be displayed on the current contact sheet.
From there, you can do your resize/watermark operation on the entire contact sheet. What I would probably do, at this point, would be to use the "Create subfolder" option and put "Resized" in the field. Photo Mechanic will create a subfolder called resized inside of the folder where the source image is located. So if you are looking at a contact that contains images from "Parent_folder/folder_A" and "Parent_folder/folder_B", this operation would result in new folders at the paths "Parent_folder/folder_A/Resized" and "Parent_folder/folder_B/Resized".
Then, open these "Resized" folders as another contact sheet (using option 2 that I provided above). Select all items (command+A or Ctrl+A) and then use the "Copy/Move Photos" option from the file menu. In this window, you'd likely want to check the boxes for "Move Photos" and "Overwrite files existing at destination". Then for the destination, choose "Create subfolder" and in the field, type ".." without quotes (".." represents the parent directory).
That should replace all of the source files with the newly saved/watermarked photos.
I'd recommend testing this on a small set of items before doing it on a larger batch. Hope this helps!
