Batch Photo Editing (no photoshop)

[Jalan]

Well, my Sister has been ragging on me about how crappy her computer is and that Photoshop is a memory hog and all that jazz. She says she could get a piece of software that does exactly what she needs for $60 on the PC. She's got a Mac 17" G4 Powerbook. She also has 55 GB of the 60 GB hard drive filled. I'm sure that isn't helping her situation either.
So basically what she needs done is for the batch action:

Open ---> resize ---> color adjust ---> watermark ---> save

Anybody have a "cheap" software recommendation for this process? I figure for software $100 or less. It also needs to be much less of a memory hog than Photoshop.

The one program that comes to mind is Graphic Converter... though I'm not that fimiliar with the program.

Thanks for your time and input. :)

[rickself]

See if she can download a trial version of the $60 program to see if it works on a pc and it does what a crappy, overloaded Mac can't do!!

Sounds like she's got it figured out already!!:D

[Jalan]

Ha, download PC software? I can't in my right mind do that. :p

Unfortunately she has the Powerbook and that's what travels with her. She needs a software to do this on the fly, literally since she does a lot of flying. She doesn't want to go back to using a Windows platform.

[D-Frag]

you guys and your PC bashing....ugh, your as bad as the commercials

[Jalan]

Well, I was just joking around. That doesn't change the fact that I have a legitimate question.

[D-Frag]

this is what i would do.

make an action for the watermark, resize, and save, and color adjust by hand.

either that or see if you can jack one of those Kodak "Auto red eye, color adjuster, photo maker" machines from your local walgreens

[urstwile]

I've actually found that the batch commands actually seem to work faster than doing the same commands manually, but I'm not sure if that's just an illusion since I'm generally doing something else while it's all happening.

I know I saw someone here refer to an open source program that does a lot of what Photoshop does, I just don't know if it does the batch thing. And I'm not familiar with Graphic Converter, at least in that capacity. I'll see if I can dig up the thread, but I think it was SurfPark that referred to the open source thing initially, if that helps. :)

[cornfed]

Are you maybe looking for Gimp?
http://www.gimp.org/macintosh/

I don't know anything about it. My husband has the pc version.

[urstwile]

That's the one, Cornfed, way to go! :)

[Jalan]

Thanks for the input. I'll check them programs out.

[doubting_thomas]

Have her make a Droplet in Photoshop that'll take care of
those actions for her. I think older versions will do that so her
system won't be so taxed. Then she can just drag and drop
all those files onto it before she goes to bed and in the morning
it'll be done. I assume she has Photoshop because she knows it
a resourse pig. (sorry I know you said no PS, but an older version
will be cheep-o)

Now that I'm thinking about it mabey you should make the
droplet for her.

Aromatown. Sheesh :D