Working with Digital Photographs in Zoner Photo Studio
Using Zoner Photo Studio 13’s Batch Filter Window
Batch edits are one of the ways you can use to quickly edit a large number of pictures. Zoner Photo Studio offers a special batch filter window that you can use to automatically use several edits in order on a picture or pictures, saving you even more time.
This filter is useful for example to apply several edits to many pictures, like resizing, framing, and then increasing contrast. You could use the Resize, etc. windows in batch mode, but it would be slower and mistake-prone. Keep in mind that some edits should rarely be used in batch at all. For example, the Curves filter is best used on each picture individually unless you have a batch of pictures with similar histograms.
For Good Batch Edits You Need a Good Batch
Like with any batch edits, you need to select pictures for the batch before using the Batch Filter. Don’t forget here the golden rule of work with digital photo files: always work with copies, not the originals. This goes double for batch edits of any kind, because otherwise mistakes can ruin large numbers of pictures quickly. Working on originals means no way to go back to the originals.
To set up the batch, first visit (or create and fill up) the folder with the pictures for the batch. If every picture in the folder should be in the batch, then the batch is ready. If some pictures should not be in the batch, then select (highlight) the pictures to use in the batch. Then use Edit | Batch Filter (Ctrl+Q) to open the Batch Filter window. This window’s left column shows the pictures in the batch; the preview panes in the middle show before and after previews for whichever picture is highlighted on the left. To switch do a different preview set and/or layout, use the buttons at the top right. Use these buttons as well to add histogram or under/overexposure displays in the preview area. The right column shows a list of the active filters within your current Batch Filter.
The Batch Filter window. Use the first highlighted buttons to show/hide overexposure highlighting and the histogram. Use the others to add/remove filters.
Combining Filters
To add filters, use the button with the plus sign at the top right. Clicking this shows the Add Filter window, which offers 50 editing filters. Click the filter to select it, then click OK. Do this one by one for all the filters you wish to use. The order of the filters can be changed later. Filters can also be deactivated later while still staying visible in your list.
To activate/deactivate a filter, use the checkbox in front of its name. To remove a filter completely, click it and then click the Remove button (with the red minus sign).
One very important step is setting up a logical order for the individual filters. Use your intuition here…but some advice is still in order on two points. File conversion should always be towards the end. And sharpening should follow shrinking, because shrinking causes blurring. To change filters’ order, click one of the filters in question and then use the “up” and “down” buttons, or click and drag the filter to the desired position.
Once everything has been fine-tuned and set up as needed, click Apply or Apply to All. Apply applies the filters only to the picture highlighted in the left column. Apply to All applies it to all the pictures in the batch. A progress bar is shown to indicate the progress of batch processing. Once the work is done, you can continue processing the photos using for example the Editor or create for example a web gallery—which is in fact a goal where the Batch Filter can be quite useful, for batch shrinking/sharpening/etc. to create thumbnails.
When file renaming is not among the filters in your Batch Filter and the output format (e.g. JPG) is the same as the starting format, the program asks before each saving whether to overwrite the file or rename it. When batch-editing a folder with copies of the original pictures, just overwrite the files, leaving only the edited versions. When you are batch-editing originals… you shouldn’t be. But when you are batch-editing originals, change the names here so the originals are not overwritten.
