How to edit hundreds of photos at once.

Step 1: Cull and organise photos faster with AI.

The first step to working in batches starts before any kind of actual photo editing is done. This is called AI culling: the process of automatically analysing a large number of photos to select the best ones.

With AI-powered Assisted Culling in Lightroom, you can efficiently organise your photo collections and folders according to specific criteria, such as subject focus, eye focus, and eyes open. You can manage settings to automatically reject misfires, accidental images, photos of documents or receipts, or images that are over or underexposed.

Here’s how you can do this:

1. Select your photos. In the Library module, open the folder or collection you want to cull.
2. Run Assisted Culling and wait for the scan to complete.
3. Choose what to keep. In the Assisted Culling panel, pick your selection method and adjust sliders to control how strict the filter is.

• Subject Focus: keeps shots with the subject in focus
• Eye Focus: prioritises sharp eyes
• Eyes Open: selects photos where eyes are open

4. Set reject options. Tick boxes to remove unwanted images (no visible eyes or “Can’t Tell” cases, documents, misfires, or exposure issues).
5. Review results. Use Selects, Rejects, or All view buttons to check Lightroom’s choices.
6. Hover over icons to see the reasoning or right-click to Mark as Select/Reject manually.
7. Organise and stack. Use Auto Stack to group similar images, then flag, rate, or label in bulk.
8. Finalise your selects. Apply presets or edits to selected images, and export when ready.

Step 2: Apply presets and sync edits across images in Lightroom.

Once your top shots are ready, it’s time to edit them efficiently. Lightroom presets are ready-made editing settings that instantly adjust your photo’s look, including exposure, contrast, colour, and tone. You can choose from Recommended, Premium, or Your Presets to apply a consistent style with one click.

Here’s how:

1. Open an album in the Grid view and select Presets.
2. Select all the photos to which you wish to apply a preset, and then select the desired preset from the menu.
3. Choose a preset category:

• Recommended: AI-suggested presets based on your photo (e.g., Subtle, Strong, B&W).
• Premium: Curated categories like Travel, Cinematic, Portrait, Sky, Landscape, and Seasonal.
• Yours: Your saved presets and Lightroom’s default presets.

4. In the Apply Preset dialog box, select Apply.

Step 3: Record actions in Photoshop.

With batch editing in Photoshop, you can record your editing steps as an Action and apply them to multiple images at once. This makes it easy to give all your photos a consistent look or match your brand. You can batch edit a variety of adjustments, such as resizing, cropping, colour correction, straightening, and file format conversion.

Here’s how:

1. Open a file on Photoshop.
2. Select Windows > Action.
3. Select New Action from the Actions panel menu.
4. Type the name of the action.
5. Select Record.
6. Perform the commands and operations you want to capture. For nonrecordable tasks, insert commands from the Actions panel menu.
7. Select Stop Playing/Recording to finish.
8. Run the Action for batch edits:

a. Go to File > Automate > Batch.

b. In the Play section, choose the Set and Action you recorded.

c . Choose source (the folder with the images you want to edit) and destination (the folder where edited images will be saved).

d. Select “Override Action Save As Commands” to save each image individually.

e. Click OK to apply the action to all images.

Step 4: Export and deliver efficiently.

After editing, exporting hundreds of photos manually can also take a lot of time. Lightroom’s batch export makes this process simple and customizable.

Here’s how to export in bulk:

1. Select all edited photos.
2. Choose File > Export, or click the Export button in the Library module. Then, choose Export To > Hard Drive in the pop-up menu at the top of the Export dialog box.
3. Specify a destination folder, naming conventions, and other options in the various Export dialog box panels.
4. Click Export.