Automating Crop Straighten

- gang-scan photos then automatically straighten

Automating Crop Straighten

Kevin from New York, NY, using Photoshop 7 with Mac OS/9.2.2, writes in with:

[Quote:]
"How can I gang-scan photos then automatically straighten and bust them apart. I've got a ton to do! [END QUOTE]

Photoshop 911:

I've been gang-scanning photos for years, even before Photoshop CS introduced the automated crop and straighten command.

I put as many photos as will fit onto your scanner bed -- leaving about an inch between them. Then scan them into Photoshop. You can't use the automated action in version 7, but you can build your own almost as easily. Check some of the automation actions below.

In CS or CS2, choose File > Automate > Crop & Straighten Photos.

Photoshop will "automagically" attempt to find the amount to rotate and and then rotate each photo from the combined scan. This is almost worth the price of upgrading if you have more than 100 or so photos; or you do this kind of work on a regular basis. Photoshop neatly makes a new document for each picture.

ALWAYS clean the scanner bed and the photos before scanning.

Always experiment. Photoshop sometimes screws up and clips a corner or two, or doesn't get the straighten quite right. I usually rely on my eye to do the best job of cropping -- many times a portion of the image deserves to get cropped off.

If building actions try these:

Actions and Batch Processing Primer on actions and batch command (For Photoshop 5, but sturdy background info.)

Taking Action Ben Long for creativepro.com actually does the best job just about every time.

Anatomy of an Action from Chainstyle.com - some good foundation info

Automated Web Photo Galleries learn actions while posting your photos on the Web.

Batch Processing in Adobe Photoshop

Danny Raphael's Photoshop Actions Tutorial - This is a Photoshop Actions Tutorial like none other, addressing action topics. Download it as a ZIP file: PhotoshopActions_ver1.1Btoc.zip

Batch Processing with ImageReady Create a "droplet" with your custom settings for optimizing images and use it process batches of images. (Be aware, this is a high overhead, high spam site)

DOWNLOAD:

Sue Chastain of About.com's Graphic Software forum (graphicssoft.about.com) has a few pretty good actions you can download to experiment with. They may not work on all systems since they are older versions of Photoshop:

TEXT: Exploding Text, Bumpy Text, Shiny Text, Grungy Text, Rock Wall, Watermark , Lightning Sues_Action_Set1.zip

CARTOON: effects Sues_Cartoon_Actions.zip

PHOTO Effects Actions - Six artistic effects are included in the action set. For Photoshop 6.0 and Photoshop 7.0. Sues_Photo_Effects.zip

If you can help, just comment below! Thank you!

PLEASE don't post new questions here! POST QUESTIONS at the Photoshop 911 EMERGENCY ROOM

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