Batchmerge many image-files to HDR using Photoshop ...

1. The Story

Another student at Filmacademy Vienna had to convert thousands of JPEG-images he shot with a digital camera in three different exposure-steps to OpenEXR-images. Since he wanted to use Adobe Photoshops "Merge to HDR" because of the superior auto-alignment and quality, he would have had to do the merging by hand, because "Merge to HDR" is a JavaScript and thus not batchable from within Photoshop.

2. The Problem

As pointed out, the function to batch is a JavaScript, and I never barely had anything to do with this. We had thousands of image-triplets to merge, and we wanted to avoid clicking through them for days. However the images were named in consecutive counting numbers in a naming scheme common for those digital cameras around. This was making life easier.

3. My Solution

I tried to come up with a solution using AppleScript I'm relatively familiar with. The easiest and fastest way seemed to be generating a JavaScript containing the instructions for merging all the image-triplets. You can call that from within Photoshop easily. Since I couldn't figure out the code to change the format of the outcome of "Merge to HDR", I left it the standard Photoshop document. These can easily be changed to OpenEXR afterwards using Photoshop skripting.
As of now, the maximum supported number of files is 999999 or less, depending on your starting counter-number. This is due to the fact that I did only implement the counting for six digits.

4. Download and HowTo ...

•    Download the zip-file:
•    batchmergetohdr.zip
•    Extract the four partxx-files and the application into a directory on your harddrive.
•    Launch makemergescript.app ...
•    It will ask for the directory your image-files are in.
•    You'll have to provide information regarding the naming scheme of your files and the first and last image you want to merge.
•    You'll have to provide a name for the script to be generated.
•    The images have to be numbered consecutively. If you have gaps within your files, do two runs with the according first and last images.
•    You'll be asked if you want to generate the script, now. This can take time, depending on the number of files you want to merge.
•    When finished you'll find the script in the directory your images are in.
•    Launch it from within Photoshop ...
•    Get a cup of coffee, go to the Zoo, watch Television, as you please.
•    Be happy that you saved a lot of time and surprise me!

Homepage online seit 23.07.2005
Zuletzt aktualisiert am 25.12.2007 von Matthias Halibrand