Batch Processing in Photoshop CS3

Question

With ImageReady abandoned and my CS2 Suite completely trashed by the installation and uninstallation of CS3 InDesign Beta I am stuck now with
all my ImageReady droplets dead! I have tried my best to set up a comparable batch process in PS, but am unable to find two important things
1) resize the photo to constrain to width only of 360 pixel width (any height is fine)
# can't fine the constrain to width only or both option
2) run auto levels
# This one is fine...
3) run unsharp mask to precise parameters, 70, radius 0.4, 0 threshold
# This one is fine...
4) then save for web jpeg quality 40%, file name lower case
# This one is fine...
5) overwrite existing file without asking me and DO NOT keep an original around
# PS keeps asking to if I want to replace the existing file.. Yes! Please do.. but I don't know how to set up the automation to automatically overwrite the existing file without asking. All these process are on copies of photos, so we want the batch automation to just run over all the files transparently in the background.
# whether I check or uncheck the "Over-ride Save As commands" PS will always stop and prompt with a "do you want to replace" with "OK" dialog.. how do you force it to over write without asking?

Answer 1

Linda Rathgeber [PVII] *Adobe Community Expert-Fireworks*
responded on the FireWorks forum with a very good lesson on
setting up a batch process in FireWorks. And, Wade, thanks
for the encouragement on just getting use to
Fireworks (people tend to just be comfortable with we know..
that's true)
But, you see: everyone on our shop (about 20 seats) paid for
an upgrade to CS3, IR droplets were critical to group collaborative work flows. I can make a droplet, post it to the server on the LAN someone else can make an alias to that droplet on their desktop and drop photos on the icon and ImageReady would boot and run the batch action in the background while they were doing their email.. it was
just *so* efficient....
now, true, there are comparable batch processing options in Fireworks and you can save the history to a script... OK, I get that. But, I cannot share that script. I am the only one with a license for Fireworks... so, out of 20 of us on the team, 19 are left without comparable tools...
It's been confirmed that PhotoShop is missing the end of process features that image ready had (tweak the droplet to constrain to width and height, over write existing files in the same folder without asking etc.)
So, while Firefox may allow us to save the scripts. I'm the only one who can use it...and delegation of pre-processing is a really important part of the work flow... I have to mount a lot of content to the web... our content generators (whoever they may be) need to have all the photos downsized, sharpened etc, *before* I get them. I does me no good just to have my own FireWorks license... and we certainly cannot pay $2,000.00 for 20 seats of Fireworks, just to regain this small facility to process photos.
So, however "sweet" Fireworks may be, and I don't doubt it is a wonderful tool... it still cannot compensate for the absence of ImageReady in the CS3 Suite.
Ideally Adobe will be listening and upgrade the Photoshop batch processing tools ASAP... that's our best solution.
I have no choice now but to write my own photo processing applications in Runtime Revolution for others to use... which will be great because I can distribute those tools for free! But it's just more work....