Son Of A Batch

Let's just push this button and see what happens... Unless you're working in Cheyenne Mountain, this is a good idea. Just clear away all flammable materials and close the lid on the hard drive before you do. You never can tell what will happen. A lot of programs that we have been encouraged to use in the last few decades ( until their developers have shut them down or sold them off... ) have had the ability to batch process files. You can set up a single example of one file, modify it where you wish, and them command the computer to duplicate those modifications upon other files of your choice. I've encountered it with the old Aperture program from Apple, the Silkypix programs, and now the Adobe Lightroom program. You can philosophise about the demise of Aperture or the oddities of Silkypix for yourself; I remember them with affection. But note that affection is just a typo away from affliction... But on to Lightroom. I pay Adobe yearly for the opportunity to use this, and so far have not regretted the impost. It has been easy enough to understand, as long as I have been prepared to sacrifice a few files to experimental error - and to proceed purblind to a number of the more arcane commands. It makes my dance shows workable and my model airplane shots delightful. Recently I got the curiosities again. I was editing a studio session that had a new backdrop in place. This was a red cloth drop with the image of a panelled wall imprinted on it - very Regency and elegant. The focal length needed to cope with the day was a little short - and made the camera sensitive to the up and down of the lens. I think that is azimuth but might stand corrected. In any case the vertical lines could tilt in and out - I wanted them straight up and down. The Lightroom program has commands that will do this - and will confine the image to a rectangular crop after it's done the business. However, doing this sequence of commands individually for upwards of 300 images challenges your will to live. How fortunate for me that I wiped away the sweat long enough to find the commands that assigned the original correction to batches of from 2 to 15 images and could lead me on to the next stage in seconds. It was one section of the menu that had never been ticked before, but will now be a regular feature. Note that proper studio shooting would have never needed this amount of correction - either keep the damned camera looking flat or use a backdrop that has no vertical figure on it. You can get out of a lot of trouble by never getting into it to begin with.