If you regularly take pictures, you are bound to take a lot of beautiful pictures. But also pictures that could have been just a little better. When it comes to a lot of different shots, this can be a daunting task. With PhotoDemon you can edit multiple photos at the same time. We explain how.
There are many photo editing tools available, from the simple standard program Paint to the advanced and expensive Photoshop. With the free application PhotoDemon, we keep it somewhere in the middle. This Windows tool is open source, completely portable – so you can put it on a USB stick – is available in Dutch and can handle HDR photos.
Besides. Anyone who already uses the correct settings on his or her smartphone often only needs to adjust little to the photos afterwards.
You can find tips for this in the iPhone photography course. That said, let’s move on to PhotoDemon.
Program overview
The interface of PhotoDemon consists of a menu bar, a working window, a layer window (right), a toolbox (left) and options for the chosen tool (bottom). Through Window, Reset all toolboxesyou restore all parts to their original condition. The interface language and color can be adjusted via Tools, Language and Theme.
At the very top right you will find a handy search function. For example, type here Red eyes you will immediately read where exactly you can find that function (at Adjustments, Photography, Red eye removal). You can move your photo with the mouse wheel. Hold down the Ctrl key to quickly zoom in and out. By clicking in the overview at the top right you quickly go to the desired location of a zoomed-in image.
You can keep multiple images open at once in PhotoDemon. When you drag another photo to the window, you can choose between Add it to the current image as a new layer (the second photo pops up in the layer window) and Open it as a standalone image (the photos will then appear in the thumbnail bar at the top, so you can switch quickly).
Edit photos with macros
PhotoDemon is therefore useful if you want to perform the same edits on multiple photos. This is possible with the use of the built-in macro recorder.
Suppose you want to convert a series of photos into shades of gray and at the same time make it a bit brighter. Then you can start the macro first and then link the desired actions, but it can also be the other way around: you perform the desired action on a representative photo and then link a macro to it. We will briefly show this last method, which we think works just a bit more pleasant.
Open the photo and choose Adjustments, Black and White. A dialog box will appear where you can experiment with all kinds of parameters, such as Style (for instance Single color channel, Green) and Number of shades of gray. If you choose less than 256 shades, other advanced options become available.
The buttons In front of and After are very useful to better estimate an (interim) result. Confirm with OK. Then you choose Adjustments, Brightness and Contrast and also set everything to your liking here. Then now to the menu Tools, where you Create macro, From history select.
In the left window you choose the first action you want to include in the macro and in the right window the last (in our example: second) action. click on OK and save the macro file (in the default folder Data Macros). Then open another photo, choose Tools, Play macro and refer to the stored macro. Ready.
Batch operations
There is another way that you can perform all kinds of edits on different photos at the same time. For that you open File, Batch operations, Process. The option No is only for changing the file name or format, but we want more. So click on Yes.
You can now choose from various combinable options, such as Fix lighting and exposure problems (fully automatic), and Resize images (enter the desired height, width, resolution and method yourself).
Via the button Select macro you can also combine these options with the edits from an already saved macro. The check mark at Apply other actions from a saved macro file is then added automatically.
click on Next one and add all the desired images via the buttons. Click again Next one and choose a different image format, including some lesser-known formats such as hdr, psd and webp.
Click again Next one and record the target location and possibly (the template for) the file names. Finally, finish with Start processing. It can hardly be faster! Hopefully this software will save you a lot of work in the future.
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