Batch Conversions - folder of images to grayscale

[Sandyfan]

Hey All!
I have about 435 images that I have to do nothing more than convert to grayscale for an arcadia book on the city where I live. I know there must be a way to do it but I havent figured it out. All of the files are in a .tiff format if that helps. If anyone has any ideas, it would be much appreciated. One thing to keep in mind, I am doing this for a charitable organization, so I cant pick up some expensive add on program to do this, I have to stay very low budget.

Thanks
Sandyfan

[jonbalza]

Hey Sandyfan, haven't seen you around here in a while! Welcome back.

...back to the question at hand...

This can all be done within Photoshop. You are going to want to look at how to use Actions and how to use the "File->Automate->Batch" command to apply 1 action to multiple images. Search for "batch" and "Actions" on the forum or use Photoshop Help to get more specific how-to's, and then come back here for more specific questions.

As to converting to greyscale, there are around a million different methods of getting good results when converting to greyscale, so you may want to search these forums for that as well. (Of course, converting to greyscale might be all you need in this case! ;} )

[Sandyfan]

Hey Jon,
Great to be back, glad to see everyone is still around and this place is still strong as ever!

Thanks for the info! I am going to get started on this, this afternoon, maybe I could just install one of those VNC programs and let you handle it from your machine --wink wink--

Thanks again! Hope to be back posting real soon!

Sandyfan

[Kevin Connery]

I do this batch conversion all the time, and have an action I use to make it practical. It's based on Russell Brown's multi-layer stack (with some tweaks), and I've attached a copy here.

In its default mode, it will give you a warmtoned look and leaves it in RGB mode.

If you want a full grayscale conversion, enable to the final step (disabled currently) to do a convert to an actual grayscale document. If you just want a grayscale image, but RGB mode is OK (some labs want them that way), turn off the Hue/saturation adjustment layer called 'Toning'.

It's designed more for semi-auto cenversions, though, in that the settings are expected to be tuned for each image. The toning and curves are what work well in general for me and what I shoot, and they may need tweaking before they're quite what you want.

To use, load the Action set, then select your images in the image browser, then run Automate > Batch and specify that action. (Override open turned off; override save turned off; output to a different folder)

[Sandyfan]

Kevin,
That is awesome - I will be sure to check it out. Thank you so much!

Sandyfan

[finalstatic]

Another neat tool for doing mass conversions/renames is called
Irfanview, it does a nice job and is 'free' in the sense that registration isn't mandatory, but on a please donate basis.

It was a whole whack of nice options for mass converting, resizing, resampling, renaming etc.

It can be found here (www.irfanview.com (http://www.irfanview.com/))