TUTORIAL: batch applying a psd
A few disclaimers - again I’m 99% self taught so there may be better ways to do anything I write up a tutorial for but these are the methods that I’ve picked at / picked up / scrutinized other tutorials and picked what made sense to me and figured out the rest on my own etc.
Also, it’s important to note that applying a psd that’s heavy on color correction and so forth may have extremely varied results and it’s unlikely that ALL of the icons will be usable unless you go in and edit each icon individually (I tend not to do that bc I’m lazy and if I batch 1000 icons and end up with ½ of them usable I’m okay with that - but if you do want to edit each icon PLEASE NOTE that you need to make any edits to the BASE ICON LAYER and NOT to the psd - changing the psd will effect alllll of the base icons with this particular method so unless you’ve saving each icon individually as you edit them it’s important that you edit the BASE ICON WHILE THE PSD is on it so you can make it look like you want).
ALSO this tutorial assumes that you have all of your base icons already made, cropped, and are all the same size. It also assumes that your PSD is already the same size as your icons (If it includes a frame or text this is VITAL, less necessary if it’s just textures / color adjustment layers etc).
Step 1: File > Scripts > Load Files Into Stack
choose the icons that you want to apply the psd to, select ok and wait for them to load.
Step 2: Select> All Layers; Layers> Group Layers & then make sure window > timeline is selected.
Step 3: on the timeline toolbar, click the dropdown menu in the menu and choose create frame animation - ONE frame will appear at this point in time
Step 4: click the button on the top right of the timeline toolbar and choose make frames from layers
all of the layers will now appear in a row across the bottom of the screen in the timeline work area (the more layers you have the longer this will take)
Step 5: make sure your psd file is also grouped into one group/folder for ease of steps later on, right click the group and choose duplicate layer, choose your target document and hit ok.
your psd should now be over ALL of the layers/frames and should show up across all of the previews in your timeline work area.
Step 6: click the button with three lines at the top right of the timeline work area and choose: Flatten Frames Into Layers
the more you have the longer this will take. i definitely suggest testing your photoshop / machine and see what the average is that it can handle without overloading.
when it’s done all of the icons w/ the psd should appear on the right hand column in your layers, and there should be two groups/folders - the original base icons and the psd group.
Step 7: click the button with three lines at the top right of the timeline work area, Select All Frames, Delete All Frames.
(if you don’t do this exporting takes much longer because it will come back to the file and move over to the next frame in the timeline before it exports it and makes everything take so much longer and you can’t generally do anything else bc ps keeps popping up as the active program etc)
Step 8: select the two GROUPS / FOLDERS - the ones w/ the original base icons & the psd and DELETE them.
you should now JUST have the edited icons in your layers area. (If you don’t delete these groups, then they will be exported with the edited icons including every layer of the psd & the base icons so at minimum it doubles the time exporting takes and just uses up unnecessary resources/time)
Step 9: I highly suggest using the Export Layers to File (Fast) script which you can find HERE (if you don’t know how to add a script it’s a quick google search or you can send me an im if you can’t get it to work etc).
File> Script> Export Layers to File (Fast)
you’ll have the choice of how to name files, whether to export all, visible or selected files, the option to add a prefix, where to save etc.
I suggest by index from top because if you have too many sometimes it errors out or only exports the first 100 with the other options.
Again, this may take a while but this script makes it MUCH FASTER than using the native export option that comes with PhotoShop.
This tutorial is obviously free for anyone to use but if you’d like to toss a buck or two my way you can do so HERE. Please like and or reblog this post if you found it useful in any way.
