[Eriamjh]

I hope I am in the correct forum. I'm lower than an amateur when it comes to photo manipulation on a Mac, but I think I have a task that can be easily done. I'm an engineer and a car mechanic by trade, but NOT a designer.

I have a bunch (500+) of square slides scanned in the computer and would like to have them printed at Costco since no one likes to pull out the slide projector and my parents can't comprehend viewing pictures on the computer. They are from 1961 to about 1982.

The problem is if I send the square pics to costco, they will crop them and print them as rectangular prints. I cannot specify "use height as print" so I get white or black space on the final picture.

So what I need to do is batch process the pics by adding them to a rectangular matte (centered is preferred) and then resavethem as such so the printer can just print away without using any brain cells.

I don't have photoshop for my Mac, but I do have QT pro and Graphic converter and the usual free tools.

Can anyone give me some step-by-step instructions on how to make this happen or write a simple script that does it? I can make the matte, but I am lost after that.

Many thanks are offered.

[Thorzdad]

Have you tried talking to an actual camera shop that does developing and printing? I'm pretty sure they would be able to give you the prints you want. It will definitely cost a bit more than Cosco, though.

Did you do the slide scanning yourself? Hopefully they are at a properly high resolution, and not screen resolution (72dpi)

[Eriamjh]

Costco is 9 cents a print. I have 550 prints to make. I's worth it for me to figure it out.

And, yes, they were scanned at 4kx4k (16MP) and I have a batch downconverted to 4MP.

[Oisín]

I don't have photoshop for my Mac

Does this mean you do have Photoshop for something else (like a work PC, for example)?

In Photoshop, it would be very simple to make an action that does exactly what you’re looking for. It’s probably possible in Graphic Converter, too, but I’ve never used that, so I wouldn’t know where to begin (GC is one of those apps I’ve never understood—it seems to do nothing else for me than throwing various incomprehensible error messages at me, no matter what I try to make it do).

[Eriamjh]

I have photoshop elements 2 for my old iMac G4 which is still running Tiger, but we don't use it much. If someone can talk me through it, I can run it on the iMac.

[Eriamjh]

Problem solved.

Since it was the weekend, the responses here are fewer than during the week, so I persisted to continue searching the net. Every program out there including Graphic Converter tends to think that the only thing anyone would ever want to do with a photo is crop it. Finally, after reading the help PDF for GC, I came across the function "Add/Delete Margins". It was exactly what I needed.

I tested it on a pic and it worked. Now the challenge was batch processing 549 other pics. I found a video demo on how to use Automator to batch crop photos and GC had a function built just for Automator for using the Add Margins feature. The only problem was I had never used Automator and hadn't a clue what I was doing.

After messing with it a bit, I managed to get Automator to work. I had to leave GC open before running the workflow, but GC opened, modified, and saved each and every file in about 30 minutes. Aren't computers great?

Now I'm off to Costco to get them printed for 9 cents each (with coupon, regular 13 cents). It will make a good mother's day present.

[Thorzdad]

Well done!

[Eriamjh]

Thank you, sir. I hope this post can help someone in the future.