Retrobatch Pro
Batch process images fast with this polished app
$29.99 (Regular), $49.99 (Pro) From Flying Meat, flyingmeat.com Needs macOS 10.12 or later
There are plenty of Mac batch image processing apps, and all of them do a decent job of adding watermarks, resizing, and stripping metadata from your photos. But none perform these tasks as elegantly as the latest application from Flying Meat, the makers of image editor Acorn.
That’s because Retrobatch takes a nodebased approach to batch image processing. Rather than combing through a laundry list of options when only a few are required, you add only what’s needed, tweaking parameters inside those nodes, and then see a real-time preview of the results before running a workflow.
This unique approach echoes that of Audio Hijack, a utility which records and processes audio in a very similar way. Nodes are selected from 13 different categories in the left-hand sidebar including Blur, Color Adjustment, Color Effect, Metadata, Sort, and Watermark. There are 62 nodes in total in Retrobatch, 15 of which are exclusive to the $49.99 Pro version.
Workflows start with nodes from Read Images – which can be individual files, entire folders, the current clipboard, or your Photos library – and end with nodes from Write Images, typically a destination folder where new images are saved. In-between, you can drag and drop (or double-click to select) processing nodes to convert, transform, add effects or watermarks, and even apply machine learning rules to exclude certain types of images or metadata.
This makes Retrobatch incredibly powerful, yet easy enough for anyone to use. Best of all, tasks like wiping sensitive metadata before sharing to social media is performed without recompressing image data, so processing is lightning fast and of the highest caliber. It’s also great for saving two versions of the same image – in different sizes, for example.
There are very good reasons why you should consider spending an additional $20 on the Pro version – extensive AppleScript support for one, as well as the ability to send processed images to other apps and create PDF or layered PSD files from multiple images like screenshots.
the bottom line. Blows other batch processors out of the water with unique node-based operation.