Trying to create a simple workflow that Photoshop won't allow me to do

Retrobatch
1

Hey everyone; new Retrobatch user here. Came across this program because astonishingly I could not find any immediate answer to creating a simple batch image processing with Photoshop.
What I would like to do would be to create a very simple workflow: All I want to do is OPEN a png file (original 3000x3000) and then save a copy at 2000x2000 with Smaller File/8-bit checked.

Can someone teach me the steps of how to do this in Retrobatch?

thanks so much!

2

Hello @jadecricket , welcome to the forum.

Under the Read Images category, there’s a node named “Prompt for Files”. You can drag and drop this onto your canvas, and each time your workflow is run Retrobatch will ask you to select a file.

Next, you want to add a “Scale” node next to the Prompt for Files node. When you click on that, you can configure it to scale down your image to “Fixed Dimensions”, and you’ll enter 2000 for both the width and height in there.

And finally you’ll add a “Write Images” node. For this you can change the file type to PNG if you’d like.

You don’t specify however if you’d like an 8 bit image as in 8 bits per channel / component, or 8 bits per pixel. If you’d like it to be 8 bits per pixel, then you’ll want to add an “Indexed PNG” before the write node.

I’ve attached an example right here you can download:

Scale to 2000 and 8BPP PNG.retrobatch (4.7 KB)

I hope that helps, and let us know if it doesn’t.

-gus

3

Gus,
this is amazing, thank you so much. I’ll need to look into the 8 bit image thing (again, this exposes my relatively novice understanding of pixel(?) density), but i do realize i neglected to add one more thing: some of the originals are in 72 pixels per inch, whereas others are in 300 pixels per inch. Would it be possible to create one more step in the workflow that says if the image is 300 ppi, then change to 72 pixels per inch, and if already 72 ppi, then leave?

thanks so much for your help,
Quin

4

You can add a “Set DPI” node (from the Metadata category) before the write images node. It’ll default to 72 when you add it, so you don’t need to change anything after that.

5

Thank you - one another question: so the outputted version in this workflow, with the quality set to low, is 4.9 mb. The original file size was 10.3 megabytes. When I run this operation in Adobe Photoshop with the export as, png (in the settings referenced in the first post), the outputted file is 1.6 megabytes. Is there a way to get the file size down closer to this?
thanks for your help,
Quin

6

For the Indexed PNG node, you can play with the Colors slider. You can also enable the “Crush” option in the Write node when you have PNG selected for the file type.

If that doesn’t work - can you send me the image? support@flyingmeat.com will work.

7

Thanks - I tried the crush mode, and it didn’t reduce the file size. Will send the original to you, really appreciate all the follow up ya’ll have given me.