I think this can be done with plain old Actions and Batches, entirely in Photoshop. If you're not very familiar with Actions, here are the basics for this one.
On the Actions palette in Photoshop, click the little icon in its upper right corner and select "New Action..." from the scroll-down. Give your action a name if you like. Note that the red "Record" dot at the bottom of the palette is now highlighted, so Photoshop will remember everything you do until you hit the square "Stop" button to its left.
Open Bridge by clicking on the Bridge icon at the top panel in the Photoshop layout. Yes, you've left Photoshop proper, but have faith. All will be well.
Navigate to the relevant folder and double-click on a raw file. When the ACR window opens, click on the blue text at the base of the window to make your preferred resolution, bit-depth, sharpening and profile settings and, most importantly, check on the box to "Open in Photoshop as Smart Objects". Click OK to close that window. Those settings will be the default in ACR until you next change them.
Click "Open Object" in the ACR window. You'll be sent back to Photoshop where a Smart Object now lies, waiting to do your bidding. Notice that while you were in Bridge and ACR, Photoshop paid attention and recorded what you did there. The list of commands in your Action is longer and the Record button is still on.
Don't do anything to the file itself. Just go to "File" >> "Save As..." and store your Smart Object as a Tiff or PSD file in a new folder.
Close the file.
Your don't need to record any more steps, so make sure to stop recording by clicking on the "Stop" button at the bottom of the Actions palette.
Okay, your Action is done. It's only four steps long:
- Browse (that's Photoshop's term for opening Bridge)
- Open
- Save
- Close
Now that your Action is made, you need to apply it as a Batch. Start this by going back to Bridge and highlighting all the files for which you want to run this process. (If you're nervous, just select a couple of less important files to see how things go.)
In Bridge, click on "Tools" in the Menu Bar, then select the category called "Photoshop>>". In that scroll-down choose the first entry, "Batch..." A new window called "Batch" will open.
The Batch window is a little daunting, but take it one bit at a time and you'll do fine. Up at the top under "Play" it asks you which Action you want to run. Most likely the one you just made will already be selected.
Under "Source", select "Bridge." The program knows that you only mean to use the files you'd highlighted.
Next are four check boxes in a row. For now I will only say to check
on all but the second one. (And even that one doesn't really matter.)
Next is "Destination:". Select "Folder" and use the "Choose" button to lead to the same place as the "Save As..." you made when you recorded the Action.
Be sure to check
on the next box, the one that says, "Override Action 'Save As" Commands". I'll tell you why in a minute.
You might well be able to ignore the rest of the window. The file naming part might be handy for you later, but I'd leave it alone for now.
Under "Errors", it's probably best to select "Stop for Errors" until you get more comfortable with the process.
Click on "OK" and, if you're lucky, you can go get some coffee while Photoshop and Bridge slave away for you.
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Okay, a couple of notes. First, running a batch carries the risk of deleting lots of files at high speed. That's what scares many people away from it. Just remember that as long as your Action saves to a folder different than your source files, there's no chance of overwriting anything.
Second, as for the two "Override..." boxes in the Batch window, they're probably the most confusing part of the process. Photoshop provides helpful pop-ups with explanations, but I swear they're more confusing still. Let me see if I can clear things up by stepping back a bit: When you made your action, you told Photoshop what to do with ONE particular raw file and how to save it as ONE particular PSD or Tiff. But when you run the batch, you want to do these steps to lots of files, not necessarily related to the original. So checking the two boxes tells Photoshop, in effect, "I know I told you to open Raw A and save it as Tiff A, but now I want you to perform these same commands on Raws B to Z and save them as Tiffs B to Z.
Finally (I promise), you can pre-edit your raw files so the resulting Smart Objects will look their best. Open up ACR, make your raw files fabulous, then hit "Done". When you run the Batch, it will use the ACR settings you've fixed to each image. It won't apply one setting to all of your pictures. MB
