Adobe Elements Question

Ok, just got back from the Ren Faire, with a stack of digital photos, my first shot in RAW. Also my first trying out Adobe Elements 8.0. My Google-fu is turning out to be weak this evening, so I'm hoping there's someone out there who's used it who can help me out.

I've sorted through the RAWs and identified those that are worth putting into the digital photo album, meaning I need them in JPEG. Before I do that I need to do apply the white balance adjustment. I can do this file, by file, by file, but it obviously takes forever.

I've found that I can open the files in a batch from within PSe, and in the Camera Raw tool that opens I can apply the white balance. It takes a looong time if you open a large batch, but doable. But as far as I can tell there's no way to save them into JPEGs from here.

I am also messing with the "Process Multiple Files". From here I see you can save a batch of files into JPEG, and can even apply auto fixes, but there's no way to apply a custom white balance.

Is there something I'm missing, or a plugin, which makes this easier?

I've got the "Missing Manual" book on order, and will continue researching of course, but any help anyone could toss my way would be greatly appreciated.

Sorry, Teneman, wish I could help, but I don't know a damn thing about Photoshop.

I'm answering because the 'reply' number may make your question more visible to casual browsers -- I often miss new posts until I see replies.

My quick google-fu, as I haven't even tried RAW yet. Full on google search I used.

Thanks for the bump Malor, every bit helps

Thanks Eezy, that site was one of the ones I found that did have helpful information. The process they lay out is pretty much what I ended up using to apply the white balance (though I didn't see when I read it yesterday that you can rate the files from there, that would help). Unfortunately you can't save the files as JPEG from there as far as I can tell.

What I ended up doing was using the ACR from within Elements Editor (as described in your link) to apply the appropriate white balance to all of my shots. Then I added all of the balanced shots to Elements Organizer and reviewed them again from there, rating the ones that I definitely wanted to put into the album. Organizer does allow a batch Export as JPEG, so I exported all of the starred files to my album folder where I can upload them to Picasa and stream them to my 360. I ran out of time last night, but I'll review them again from that folder with Picasa and do any minor edits and crops that are necessary. If any of them need serious editing work I'll open the original RAW back up in Elements Editor, do the editing, then save it individually as a JPEG

Using RAW and Elements is definitely more powerful than just shooting in JPEG and dumping them all into Picasa, but the workflow just seems a lot more complicated. Here's hoping that further research and familiarity with the software will let me streamline somewhat.

What kind of Camera are you using? If you're going to continue to shoot in RAW you might want to try out Lightroom, it's by far the best tool for organizing RAW shots.

I'm shooting with a Canon EOS XTi. Love the EOS, I've got an EOS 650 (film body) from over 20 years ago that's still ticking along as well.

I'm definitely looking into Lightroom too. It's on the list of things I'd like to pick up. That list is rather long at the moment though While I've been using the XTi for a few years now, I'm just now starting to get back into photography semi-seriously, which means a lot of gear I need to put on the list for eventual acquisition. First up I need a better tripod and a new external flash. Unlike all my old EF lenses, the external flash from my 650 won't work with the XTi.

Ahh if it was a Nikon I'd suggest trying ViewNX for your batch conversions/white balance. I don't think Canon has any free product like it.

I need to get myself an external flash for my D40, I just haven't had the time to actually go out and start taking pictures of stuff. Just too busy with other things.