14 DAY TRIAL // Adding a personal touch to the things we own is something often done because it is a good manner to display a bit out of our style. Of course, this applies to images, especially to those taken with the digital cameras that most of us own. A little logo in a corner, some special words well placed somewhere in the scenery, borders and shades, all these can give a unique look to your pictures. However, if you want just one from the list above or you feel the need for having the complete works at your fingertips, there's something you cannot do without - the befitting tool to make it all happen.
The range of utilities designed to help you handle and customize photos is rather comprehensive, to say the least. You can find the right instrument for almost any image processing task and, more than that, there surely is a freebie waiting to be discovered and it will prove indispensable for your current and future projects. A software that can make the list is Sea Turtle Batch Image Processor, a cost-free program that can serve multiple purposes, all related to photo retouching.
There is no installation required before being able to operate this small but efficient tool, all you have to do is unpack the archive and run the executable. The interface has an original look, quite sleek and with a predominantly dark skin. The controls are easily accessible, well organized and with help tips available for all the functions. In case you wonder what a certain button does or if you are unsure about the capabilities of any command, you can press the little question mark next to it and a tooltip will let you know what that feature is all about.
As its very name clearly states, this utility will allow you to simultaneously work with several files at once and, in fact, this is one of the first steps you will take, namely create a list containing the images you want to transform. By default, all the pictures from the source folder you choose will be marked and you can leave out any unwanted photos by deselecting them. Also, a great little helper is the preview ability you are provided with and which can be activated by hovering the mouse cursor over the files you have in the listing. Alongside the smaller screening you can view the EXIF information whenever the details are present.
Once you've made up your mind about the images that are to take part in the overhauling operation, it's time to decide what type of watermark you will use: image or text. If you opt for the first one, there are a few customizations you can play with, such as position and rotation angle. The supported formats for watermarks are JPG, BMP, GIF and PNG. Sea Turtle Batch Image Processor lets you put the logo of your choice in one of the nine available locations: top, middle or bottom on the center, left or right of the input pictures. The image you use as a watermark can also be placed under any angle, up to a complete 360 degrees rotation. All you have to do is move a slider and watch the live preview to select the right setting. Another thing that you can tinker with is the transparency level of the stamp you will superimpose on the photos. The opacity ranges from 0 to 1 or in other words from completely transparent to completely opaque with intermediary stages of 0.1 increments.
If you choose to use a text watermark for your files, there are some more configurations to consider besides the two that are described above: rotation and position. You can set up the font that will be used, the text color and alignment. A particular feature of this application is the capability of adding EXIF tags into the text string. From a drop down list you'll be able to pick metering mode, resolution, exposure and many more details. Just as for the image watermark, there is a live preview that shows you how the stamp will look like.
With this software you can process the pictures in other ways as well. For instance, you can apply certain effects, a couple to be more precise: negative and grayscale. Also, you may opt to preserve the EXIF information for JPG files and determine the compression ratio for the same image format. This utility can help you further enhance the looks of your photos with Drop Shadows. For this visual effect alone you have the possibility to set different parameters, such as background and shadow color, depth and location.
Your digital images can receive even more enhancements because with this program you can ornate them with stylish borders. You can decide the color for the margins and their width or thickness as well. Yet another use for Sea Turtle Batch Image Processor is that of picture shrinker. This tool will enable you to downsize photos based on one of the three available methods. The first one will let you specify the dimension of the longer side as base of calculation, the second will take into account the new width you input, while the last one calculates the final proportion starting from the height of the processed files that you will manually insert.
The last tab addressable in the application's interface is related to the output settings. Here you will find two functions for generating thumbnails and renaming the pictures. Apart from defining the size, you can customize the naming pattern by writing your personal name prefix and suffix. A handy characteristic of this tool is the number padding that gives you the opportunity to stipulate a value that defines the number of digits that will be utilized as auto increment. What this means is that if you set as value 4 for example, in the output filenames you'll have numbers like 0001, 0002, 0003 and so forth.
Once all the configurations are complete, you can save the project so the options will be ready for use the next time. It's also worth mentioning now the preferences that are to be found in the dedicated menu. From that spot you have the possibility to select one of the ten date time formats that apply to the text watermark. The other choice is usable especially if you have a multiple core CPU and it refers to the number of process threads that will be engaged in the image processing.
The more threads you activate the better the performance you get, but this will definitely take its toll on system resources. In fact, the memory usage is quite notable with over 40 MB engaged when the application simply idles. Running the actual job will raise the bar somewhere near and sometimes above the 100 MB of RAM mark while the processor is used well above 60 percents of its total capacity. It will get the job done fast enough - under 30 seconds for a batch of 50 files in different formats - while preserving the original quality of the pics. The system used for testing the software features a 1.90 GHz AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual-Core processor with 2GB of physical memory.
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Here are some snapshots of the application in action:
