Cut Your Batch Processing Time In Half

Photoshop’s batch processing abilities make mammoth tasks into laughably easy ones, and the time saved can be significant. What if I told you that it’s possible to double that time savings by processing images twice as fast?

This is a technique I stumbled across when batch processing some product images for a client recently. It’s a single step that isn’t really a Photoshop technique but makes perfect sense: make Photoshop process the batch while in the background, ie. not the active application. When Photoshop runs in the background it doesn’t take the time to render and display the image—it simply shows the transparency checkerboard pattern and puts all its processing muscle into executing actions. Try it out: see how long it takes Photoshop to process a batch of images while it’s active, then do it again but click on the Finder desktop (or Windows desktop) right away and watch it process faster. I clocked a 40% decrease in the time taken to execute a large batch. See what it can do for you!