14 DAY TRIAL // Art is something that you can afford to make, no matter how good you are at it. This is the reason that makes Lamborghini or Ferrari sell one car while other producers like Renault or Volkswagen sell thousands, but I am not going to talk about cars now. Graphics design and processing is another field that often requires processing large quantities of photos as fast as possible, and if you don't want to waste your time doing exactly the same thing over and over again, a software helper is needed. I must confess that I am still searching for software helpers that can sleep, work and clean the house in my place, but those are still some light years away. Usual tasks like image conversions, watermarking or color adjustment are really easy to accomplish using a lot of programs, and today I found a batch processing tool simply called BatchPhoto.
First of all, I have to thank the producer for the license that we received for this program, a license worth 29.95$. The version you can get for free is a 30 days trial that is limited to batches of less than 5 photos and has a registration reminder dialog that will disappear as soon as you buy BatchPhoto. Why should you buy this program, this is what we have to discover...
The last version of the program is 1.5.1, its setup package weighs exactly 3MB and installing it was a piece of cake, exactly the same as using such a program should be. These being said, I guess the time has come to check its interface and features, as we always do.
When it's about batch processing, the only things that matter to me are speed, quality and ease of use, so even command line tools are suitable for this purpose, if they are well done. Anyway, you don't have to worry, because BatchPhoto is far from being a program using a command line interface! Its main window is very simple, well organized and your work is guided by a wizard having only three steps, and this is what we're going to hunt right away. There is no toolbar here, and there are no graphics at all, because they are not needed.
Before moving on to the wizard and things that can be done with this program, I have to check the supported files list, because this is the main place where weaknesses can be noticed. Well, BatchPhoto supports all common formats, and this is what most programs claim to do, but while others consider the common file formats to be less than five, this time, you get the real thing. Just think about these: BMP, GIF, JPG/JP2, PNG, PSD, PDF, TGA, TIFF, SVG, EPS and many, many others. To sum up things, I have to tell you that in total, there are 106 different image formats, from which 96 can be read and 69 can be written.
The program starts up for the first time showing the profiles management window. A profile is a collection of presets that will configure BatchPhoto to perform a certain task, for example watermarking, resize and move photos to a chosen folder. Using the built-in profiles is more than easy, and I am not going to show you how to use them, but we'll follow the wizard in creating a custom batch processing task.
First of all, you have to add the files and/or folders containing the image files you want to process, and that's as easy as possible - use the Add Photo(s) and Add Folder button that can be found inside the Add Photos screen. If you are unsure about the photos you have added, you can use the Preview function to check them and decide what to keep and what to remove. Once everything is OK, you can move on to the next step and add some filters.
The Add Filters screen is very easy to use and its purpose is to help you add and configure filters that will be applied to the photos you have previously added to the processing list. There is a total of 36 filters that can be applied to your images, organized in four categories - Touch-Up, Annotate, Transform and Effects. Changing brightness, contrast, adding watermarks, crop, resize, applying blur or noise, as well as many other operations are available here, and discovering all of them can be a real pleasure, I can tell you that!
In the Add Filters area you can also set file rename options and check the previews for both original and modified images, as well as adjusting each filter's advanced settings, if any.
At last, the Setup screen must be used to choose the output folder, format and few general settings - open output folder after processing, set same date and time as the original for output files and delete source files after processing.
This is it; all you have to do now is press the Process button and check the results. Easy, isn't it? Exactly the way batch processing should be!
The Good
BatchPhoto is very easy to use, fast and reliable. Add the facts that its interface won't hurt your eyes at all, settings and profiles can be easily saved and loaded as needed and the documentation, although small in size, can prove quite useful, and you shall have the truth.
The Bad
I hate limitations of shareware versions that are beyond a certain line, and this time, I guess that something could be changed, for example the output images can have a watermark until you buy the program or the trial period can end after a day, but you should have all the features available for that time. After all, this program is not cheap, but not expensive either, and if you are going to use it, it's going to be for a long time.
The Truth
I am not crazy about batch tools, because I do my batch renaming in Total Commander and image processing in IrfanView, but I must admit that BatchPhoto is an excellent choice and can help you process your images and rename them as fast and easy as it gets. You have 30 days available to try this program for free, and despite the limitations that come with it, I strongly advise you to grab it as soon as possible!
Here are some snapshots of the application in action:
