Software Review: EasyBatch

November 20, 2008 | Category: Site News

If you’re a busy photographer who is also a Mac user, BravoBug Software’s EasyBatch can be a very useful time-saver for you.

At the end of a typical shoot, I usually hand the model a copy of the photos on a disc. Of course, I first have to rotate, shrink, shrink again (I create two sets), and rename the files. This can take a little bit of time, as I use three different applications to get to the point where I can burn the disk. In addition, I’ve been considering watermarking all the photos with a copyright notice… not just the ones that touch up and post… which means my model would have to hang out even longer waiting for her photos… and I have to wait longer to take my post-photoshoot nap.

So I went looking for a FOURTH application that could batch-watermark a group of files, and I was pretty excited to discover EasyBatch . This Mac application can batch rotate, shrink, watermark, and rename files in one quick pass through… plus do a few more things like file conversion and compression.

There are (however) a few things missing that I’d love to see in the next version of this application:

An option to lightly sharpen your photo as you shrink them.
An option to shrink a photo by a % in addition to the already present pixel and inch size. I had to look up the pixel dimensions of the photo and then divide to shrink my photos to 50%. The first time I did it, I accidentally reversed the numbers and ended up with a model who looked very short and very wide… and not terribly flattering.
The ability to save your settings as a droplet. Since I like to shrink things down twice, I need to make two passes through this application with the same set of photos… the initial one to rotate, shrink, rename, and watermark, and the second one just to shrink the photos down a second time. The ability to save your settings as a droplet would be a real time saver for me, especially since I don’t want to keep having to remember how many pixels wide and tall my photos need to be all the time.

As a test, I managed to rotate, shrink, watermark, and rename 750 photos in about 10 minutes… a task which usually takes 20 minutes to half an hour with my other applications. The resulting photos looke great.

After my first pass, I ran the photos through my usual batch shrinker (which does sharpen) and I was very pretty pleased with the end results. I’ll probably be purchasing the app, as it comes closest to being an all-in one solution for my particular workflow… and is a real bargain at $18.