If you work constantly with a large number of photos that require the same type of edits, you can’t really go through them one by one. That would require too much time and energy. In this case the optimal solutions is to resort to an app designed to automate those operations and implicitly make your task significantly easier.
In this article we’ve created a list of 10 Mac apps which you can use to edit multiple photos at once:
Photos
Your Mac comes by default with some useful apps you can put to use to increase productivity, and Photos is definitely one of them. Photos is not a batch editor per se, but offers a workaround through the Copy Adjustments tool so you don’t have to edit images one by one.
Let’s say you want to improve the overall appearance of your images shot today in the park by adjusting things like brightness, color, sharpness and white balance. With one of the images in Edit mode, apply all the desired edits to it. Then, once you’re done, go to Image > Copy Adjustments. Next use your arrow keys to step to the next photos, remaining in Edit mode. Last, go to Image > Paste Adjustments and the app will apply all the changes you made to the first picture.
This workaround does help you apply the same adjustments to a group of photos, but it doesn’t include operations like crop and rotate. Furthermore, it’s not as fast and as effective as using an app particularly designed to handle batch processing.
BatchPhoto
BatchPhoto is a tool specially built to batch edit photos on a Mac. The app comes with a simple and intuitive interface, which makes it easy to use from the get-go. Basically, it’s conceived as a three-step wizard: you add your photos in the first step, apply the desired edits in the second and select the output format and destination in the third.
What can you do with it? Well, BatchPhoto offers a wide range of edits which you can apply to all your images simultaneously. You can optimize your photos by resizing, converting, cropping or rotating them, brand them with a logo or text watermark, add a date and time stamp, retouch them by adjusting the brightness, contrast or saturation. In the same session you can apply special effects like sepia, black and white or oil paint and decorate your pics with vintage frames.
BatchPhoto has a couple of additional features designed to boost productivity. For instance, you can save your current settings as Profiles and easily use them again later without having to go though the same process. Furthermore, the app comes with a smart Folder Watch option. What this does is monitor folders on your Mac, network or website and, every time new images are being added, automatically apply a set of edits which you previously defined.
In addition to saving the edited images on your Mac, you can also directly upload them to your FTP account or send them via email.
Affinity Photo
Affinity Photo is a complex tool created for advanced image editing. If you’re rather new to editing, it may take a while to learn how to properly use it. The software comes with an impressive array of retouching and correction tools, brushes, effects and filters to help you create professionally-looking, multi-layered photos.
When it comes to applying the same edits to multiple pictures, Affinity Photo offers two useful features: macros and batch jobs. Macros represent the equivalent of actions in Photoshop. The program comes with a series of built-in macros for standard operations, but also lets you create your own, save them and apply them to a batch of images.
At the same time you can take advantage of the tool’s batch job feature. Just go to File > New Batch Job and load the photos you wish to edit. Next you can select the desired output format, whether to resize or not the pictures and choose which macros to apply from the available panel. Hit the OK button and the processing will begin.
Polarr
Polarr is a photo editing software available on almost all platforms and devices. You can find it as an online tool, an app for iPhone and Android, as well as a desktop-based solution for Windows and Mac.
Polarr is a mix of both worlds and therefore is designed to address both beginners and professionals. It’s great for beginners, because it comes with numerous features to automatically enhance your photos. It’s also useful for professionals, because it offers multi-layer support, curve tools and local adjustments among others.
If you’re dealing with multiple images that require the same changes, the tool offers a batch export feature. Its batch processing feature isn’t as advanced as you’ll find it in other programs, but you’ll be able to convert, rename, resize or watermark photos in bulk. You’ll also have the chance to apply image adjustments and aesthetic filters to all the selected pictures at once.
PhotoScape X
PhotoScape X is a truly interesting and feature-rich batch photo editing app for Mac. The tool provides users with extensive options to fix images and hundreds of filters and effects to enhance them.
Standard optimizing options include edits like resize, straighten, rotate, circular or perspective crop. You can easily go further and resort to the multitude of tools and brushes to perform red eye correction, to remove water and dust spots or wrinkles, pimples and other skin blemishes. PhotoScape X lets you remove the background from your images and also protect them by adding a customizable text watermark.
The app comes with multiple filters to create eye-catching pictures. You can boost your photos in bulk by adding light leaks, tilt-shift, HDR, bloom or old film effects and can also adjust settings like contrast and sharpness. Besides being a batch editor, PhotoScape X can also be used as an image viewer, to create animated GIF’s, to create collages from multiple photos or to capture screenshots.
PhotoMill
PhotoMill is a Mac app developed to serve multiple purposes. Practically you can use this program to apply various edits to your images in bulk, as a metadata editor and as a photo browser.
The app makes it easy to convert pictures to popular formats, to rename, resize and watermark them, as well make improvements to the overall quality. The latter option enables you to apply various filters to automatically adjust the contrast and white balance or manually change the exposure, sharpness, HSL channels and more.
Besides image editing, you can edit EXIF/IPTC metadata tags by adding copyright information, correcting the date/time or removing private data for example. PhotoMill also gives you the possibility to view, organize, search or label your pictures. The app lets you upload your newly-edited pics to Flickr, share them on Facebook or move them to another Mac via AirDrop.
Photo Sense
Photo Sense is not your standard Mac image editor. This app is different from the others, since it focuses on automatically making your images look better. Besides batch editing, Photo Sense offers users the opportunity to automatically enhance photos and plenty of options to customize the results.
Depending on your needs, the app places at your disposal three workflow alternatives: totally automatic (the only thing you’ll be doing is add your photos and saving the results), semiautomatic and manual, where you can go through your pictures and manually fine-tune them. In terms of image enhancement possibilities, they’re numerous: you can adjust the exposure, contrast, saturation, highlights and shadows, reduce the noise, sharpen your images or boost the clarity. You can also optimize your photos by performing operations like crop, rotate, flip or straighten.
Photo Sense comes packed with image effects, which range from classic black and white and sepia to mystic glow, pencil or invert colors. The app also has a series of predefined presets to choose from, and at the same time allows you to create your own presets. Once you’re done editing, you have the option to directly share your collection on various social media networks.
PhotoBulk
PhotoBulk is a simple alternative for batch editing images on your Mac. In comparison to other apps, this one doesn’t provide the same variety of features, but it gets the job done efficiently if you’re working with a large collection of photos. On the plus side, the interface is modern and easy to navigate.
You can’t perform image retouching edits, like improving the brightness and saturation, but you can protect and brand your photos by using different types of watermarks. In the same session you’ll be able to rename, resize, optimize or convert your photos, as well as add the date and time to them. PhotoBulk allows you to save your settings as presets for increased productivity.
PhotoGUN
PhotoGUN is a user-friendly Mac app developed to edit images in bulk. The process is far from complicated: all you have to do is drag and drop your photographs, choose the operations you wish to apply to them and then click on the “Save Results” button. The program offers a live preview for every edit you make and lets you save your operations as presets for later use.
PhotoGUN addresses beginners due to its ease of use, but it also offers advanced features for professionals. In that sense it comes with layers and masks, adjustable curves and levels in case you want to gain control over the editing process. The app allows you to enhance your photos by adjusting parameters like the brightness and contrast and also resize, watermark, crop, blur or add borders to them.
Photopaw
Photopaw is a lightweight image editor with batch processing capabilities. The app gives you the possibility to crop, resize, rotate and apply various adjustments to multiple photos at once. It’s worth mentioning that there’s support not only for popular image formats, but also for numerous RAW files.
Photopaw offers an option to automatically enhance your pictures, but it also provides sliders so you can manually adjust the brightness, contrast, saturation or temperature. With this app you can additionally remove red eye, apply diverse photo effects and annotate your images using text, shapes, talk bubbles, a QR code or your own signature.
