ACR multi image processing?

[bossel]

With my first steps shooting raw I have now 220 pics to process (shot cRaw + JPG). And it's necessary, since on many on the JPGs the auto-whitebalance is pretty off. (my KM5D was better in that respect, I think).

I tried IDC: hmm, doesn't really impress me and the 23 floating palettes don't really help. Slowest of all, even on my latest greatest PC.
ACR 4.5 seems to be easy to use, but I have to process each image, then open it in PSE and save.
I installed the test version of DXO, but no cRaw suport.
I installed the test version of bibble (their demo videos looked quite good to me) but it crashes on starting.

Is there any way to batch-process in ACR+PSE (CS3 too expensive here)? I know I can select multiple images in one go and then process them one after another. What I'd like is to select a bunch of picutres, set a common set of parameters like WB, sharpening, black point, highlight recovery etc and the process & save with one click. Any way? Any other tool worth testing, like C1 (Given the price & upgrade politics of Adobe in Europe, I am not keen on using lightroom)?

[David Kilpatrick]

Yes, it's called Lightroom, from Adobe, and it works really well for the kind of workflow you want. Same engine as ACR 4.5, but you can batch a whole set of images, do retouching and even some new clever stuff like graduated filters, and then after you have done all your selection and edits, just leave it to save the final JPEGs while you eat/sleep/swim or whatever.

David

[bossel]

Yes, it's called Lightroom, from Adobe, and it works really well for the kind of workflow you want.

That's what I was afraid of. As a pure amateur, I now don't want to fork out another 300 Euro /450 USD for lightroom and then again 130 Euro/190 USD for each upgrade .Probably just to discover to get the same, cut down ACR as Elements users get. I saw a screenshot yesterday of ACR and there were plenty of tabs to set different options. As a Elements user, I only have 2 tabs in ACR, the basic one for exposure and saturation etc, and a second one with sharpening and noise reduction . That's all. Probably to use lightroom + ACR fully, you'd better also own CS3, which is around 1500USD here Not for me

I'll summarize in another thread what I did to process my "wedding as a guest" pictures

btw I do own a legal copy of Elemnts 5 (value around 95 Euro) and it would cost me 80 Euro to upgade to Elements 6

[Birma]

... and Elements 7 out soon - how much "better" does it need to get? I'm still on Elements 2 and struggling to make that work. Whenever I brace myself to get the latest version I find the next version is out. Oh well, not different to the hardware I suppose.