At some point, you may want to edit several images simultaneously to, for example, convert them from one format to another, change their size, or apply a filter. If you want to do the same thing to dozens of images, repeating the process over and over would be tedious and time consuming. Thankfully, computers excel at automating repetitive processes. Remember: If you’re doing something repetitive on a computer, there’s probably a better—and faster—way to do it!

Automatically applying changes to a series of images, one after another, is called batch processing. Here, we’ll discuss three ways to transform multiple images at the same time. The first one is done from a command line and can be used only in rather simple situations. The second one uses a plug-in, but it works only for a small set of simple operations. The last one uses an independent application.