Having to edit dozens or hundreds of images can be a time-consuming and challenging task. Just imagine going through 50 pictures one by one in order to crop out unwanted parts. It would be a painful mission, right?

Luckily, thanks to Photoshop’s batch processing feature, which allows us to automate a wide range of edits, we can turn a tedious process into a simple and efficient one. In this step by step tutorial we are going to show you how to crop photos in bulk, assuming you have to cut them in the same manner.

Step 1

Before you start editing your images in Photoshop, it’s advisable to properly organize them. So go ahead and create two new folders on your desktop. The first one will be called “Original Photos”, while the second one, “Cropped Photos”, will be the folder where you’ll save the edited pictures.

Step 2

After you’ve opened in Photoshop one of the images from the “Original Photos” folder, you’ll need to record a new action. The easiest way to do this is by going to the top bar menu and clicking on Windows > Actions.

Next, once the new dialog box appears on the top right corner of your screen, click on the “create new action” icon. Give your action a meaningful name like “Crop” and click on Record.

Step 3

Select the crop tool from the left menu bar or by pressing C. Next, to begin cropping, simply drag one of the corner or side handles towards the center of the photo. In case you want to change the position of the picture within the border, just click and drag on it. Also if you want to maintain the same aspect ratio, hold down the Shift key while dragging the corner or side handles.

Step 4

When you’re satisfied with the way your image has been cropped, you can stop recording your action. In order to do this click on the square “stop recording/playing” icon, located on the left side of the Actions box.

Step 5

Now it’s time to apply your edit to your entire group of images. In order to do it go to File > Automate > Batch.

From the Play menu select the action you’ve created, in our case it’s called Crop. From the Source menu choose the folder we created in Step 1 called “Original Photos” and from the Destination menu choose the folder “Cropped Photos”. which will contain all the edited pictures.

Next just hit the OK button and Photoshop will begin batch processing your images.

All in all, to batch crop in Photoshop can be a great way to simplify your post-processing work. Just follow the above-mentioned steps and you’ll be able to save both time and energy, required for other personal or professional projects.

If you’re looking for an alternative to Photoshop and need a simpler solution to crop images in batch mode, you can also try BatchPhoto. The tool is easy to use and allows you to process dozens or hundreds of images at the same time. You can find out more about how to crop your images using BatchPhoto here.