So Adobe

Tuesday, June 1, 2010

So, say you've got, oh, 400 web graphics that need to be saved at a higher compression to save space. Ah, you say — I have Photoshop, which includes a batch processor! Excellent, I'll get this done in no time.

So, you create an action to export a photo at a certain file size. Then you batch process the folder with all those images. Everything seems to be going swimmingly, until… suddenly you get an error message. Photoshop can't open that many files, it says. You swear a bit, and then click the OK button.

So, now you're stuck clicking that OK button another 200 times because after it displays the error, it keeps on trying to open the rest of the files in the batch.

SO, you figure you'll cut your loses and force quit Photoshop. You go create a new folder with fewer images in it and reopen the app.

SO, then when you go to do your batch action again, you discover that Photoshop didn't save the action you created — cos it only saves stuff like that when you quit the app. I don't know about you, but with Adobe apps I have to force quit far more than I quit the usual way. I lose so much work this way because the apps don't write changes when I make them.

So, anyway. Each time one of these things happen, you learn — you know, like a rat in a maze being shocked. You create the action again, quit immediately so it saves it, create a folder with only 200 images instead of 400, and then carefully start again.

So, everything works this time, and your images are all saved and you have 200 windows left on your screen. So, you go to the helpful "Close All" menu item.

So, 200 images. None of them have been touched or edited in any way, just opened and reserved.

SO, what does Photoshop do? It puts up 200 alerts, one at a time, asking if you want to save changes to 200 files that you made no changes to.

This was the first hour of my Tuesday. I'd stay out of my cube if I were you.

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