Making Changes to Multiple RAW Files at Once

Recently, on a trip to Tokyo, I was shooting some nighttime scenery and set my white balance to Cloudy. The next day, I went out on a photo shoot and shot a bunch of photos in perfect daylight using the same white balance settingnot good. Normally, that might be a problem, but with Camera Raw in Photoshop CS2, it's an easy fix.

Step One

In Bridge, navigate to the photos that you'd like to edit. Select one photo, then Command-click (PC: Control-click) on several other photos to add them to the selection.

©MATT KLOSKOWSKI

Step Two

Press the Return (PC: Enter) key to open these files in Camera Raw. The dialog will open showing the first photo (from Bridge) in the main preview area. However, if you look over to the left side, you'll see the other photos you opened, as well.

Turbo Boost

Toggle the clipping warning check-boxes (at the top right of the image preview) on and off with their keyboard shortcuts instead. Use U for Shadows and O for Highlights.

Step Three

Don't do anything different yet. Just edit your photo as you normally would. In this case, I changed the White Balance setting from Cloudy to Daylight. This changes only the currently selected photo that is open in the main preview area.

Step Four

To apply this edit to the rest of the photos, look in the top-left corner of the screen and click the Select All button. All of the photos along the left will then be selected for editing.

Step Five

Now click the Synchronize button. You'll see the Synchronize dialog open. Make sure that any setting changes you've made are checked here (in this case, White Balance). Click OK and Camera Raw will apply the same changes to all of the photos at once. That's all there is to it!

Turbo Boost

When using the Synchronize option in Camera Raw (with multiple images open), press-and-hold the Option (PC: Alt) key to bypass the Synchronize dialog and apply the last setting used.