Batch Operations & Efficiency

Professional photographers deal with not just dozens of photos, but thousands or even tens of thousands. Photocatalyst's cross-page selection, batch rename, batch export, and other features make large-scale operations efficient and manageable.

1. Cross-Page Selection: Collect Once, Process Together

Cross-page selection is the foundation of batch operations. It allows you to maintain selection state across different views (albums, people, timeline, search results, etc.), gathering photos from various places for unified processing.

Enabling

Click the layer icon at the top of the sidebar to enable cross-page selection mode.

Selection Operations

Status Bar Monitoring

When enabled, the status bar displays in real time:

• Current page selected: Selection count in the current view
• Cross-page total: Cumulative total across all pages
• Click to view a detailed list, supports removing specific photos from the list

Typical Workflow

People view select person → Timeline select date → Folder limit scope → Unified export

1. Filter a specific client's photos by face in the People page
2. Switch to Timeline, further narrow down the date range
3. Add a few more from search results
4. The status bar shows the cumulative selection count
5. Export / create album / tag all at once

2. Batch Rename

Batch rename supports two modes: template variables and regular expressions, with live preview.

Entry

Select multiple photos → Right-click → Edit → Rename (shortcut F2).

Template-Based Rename

Common template variables:

Common photographer templates:

Handling Empty Fields

When a variable has no data (e.g., {location} without GPS), you can choose to "Keep as-is" or display "Unknown".

Regex Rename

Batch find and replace on existing filenames:

Use $1, $2, etc. to reference capture groups.

Rename Preview

Before execution, each line shows original filename → new filename, with differences highlighted. You can set whether to overwrite existing files.

3. Batch Export

Export Formats

Size Control

Advanced Options

• Ignore small images: Skip undersized thumbnails to avoid exporting useless files
• Progress monitoring: Real-time progress for large batch exports
• Auto-open on completion: Automatically navigate to the folder when export is done

4. Batch Tag Management

Quick Tagging

1. Select photos → Right-click → Edit → Write Tag (Ctrl+T)
2. Enter tag name, confirm
3. Tags take effect immediately, searchable and filterable

Batch Add/Remove

After cross-page selection, write tags to all at once, suitable for:

• Marking "Delivered" / "Pending" status
• Unified tagging for client photos
• Marking "Curated" / "Rejected"

5. Batch AI Analysis

Trigger AI analysis on selected photos:

Batch Processing Workflow Examples

Wedding Photographer Delivery Workflow

1. Import all photos from the day, wait for indexing to complete
2. People view → Select the couple → Cross-page select
3. Timeline narrows to the day's date range
4. Batch rename: {year}{month}{day}-Wedding-{index}
5. Batch tag: Wedding, {couple's name}
6. Quality filter, remove blurry photos
7. Batch export as JPEG 90%, width 2048 px
8. Export as album, set password to share with clients

Landscape Photographer Organization Workflow

1. Aggregate by location → View each shooting location
2. Browse by time within each location
3. Semantic search to fill gaps: "mountain" "sunset" "sea of clouds"
4. Cross-page select curated work
5. Batch rename: {location}-{year}-{index}
6. Tag: Landscape, Curated
7. Export in original format for archiving

Related chapters: Chapter 8: Batch Operations | Chapter 9: Export & Sharing