Part 3 (see Part 1 and Part 2) of my exploration of Mac OS X options for budget ($100 or less) image browsers/batch processors. I basically want something to make it easy for me to generate the watermarked full size/thumbnail pairs I post here in my blog. The premise is that, with a better tool, I’ll spend less time processing and will post photos more often as I’ll avoid that “I don’t have time” roadblock.

My criteria, again:

• Quick rendering in the browser
• Batch creation of copies of the images
• Watermarking
• Sharpening
• A nice simple, clean, elegant UI

Without further ado, and in no particular order:

EasyBatchPhoto

First Impression: According to the web site description, this should be just what I’m looking for. Launching the application brings up a window for setting up your batch rules. It is fairly straightforward, though I had to look up what some of the options meant (for example, “Fit to rectangle” means “scale to this maximum size maintaining proportions”).

Usage: Watermarking using my .png file worked as it was supposed to. The way it popped up dialogs for things I’d already set was a little strange, but I’m sure that after using it a few times I’d get used to that.

Conclusion: There really isn’t much to this app – it does what it says and that’s about it. I’d have to compare the output closely, but from my initial usage I’d put it right behind miniBatch for a batch processor.

Price: $25

DropWaterMark

First Impression: Hmm, from the web site I’m guessing this may be developer-itch-scratch-ware. We shall see.

Usage: Well, this isn’t the easiest software to use… I didn’t even understand the ittle tutorial that popped up on first launch.

Conclusion: This only seems to watermark, not resize. I’ll pass on this one.

Price: $16.50

Batch

First Impression: The web page is the “higest form of flattery” to Panic. The VersionTracker listing says:

Batch is the easy, yet very powerful image viewer/editor/batch processing solution for digital images…

Sounds perfect! Let’s try it out.

Usage: Hmm, you have to double click an item in the tree view to get it to show images – that seems a little awkward to me. There is an “import” function for bringing in photos from an outside source like a digital camera – an intersting choice to include that.

Conclusion: Finally, a combination image browser and batch processor. Unfortunately, I feel that it falls a little short of the best of breed options for either image browsing or batch processing.

Price: $15.95

ViewIt

First Impression: Sounds like an image browser first, with some other options added via plugins. I’m intrigued.

Usage: Very quick thumbnail preview, slick little control for moving between images in single image mode. The ‘Create Web Pages’ option will do an export in 2 sizes, very nice. There doesn’t appear to be any watermarking functionality unfortunately, though there is a ‘Launch Shell Script’ option – would writing a PHP script for doing all this be a fool’s errand?

Conclusion: This is a very well executed program, if it had watermarking support it would be very close to a solution for me. I’d also like to see the integration of a folder tree pane into the image browser window.

Price: $20

I haven’t yet found a perfect solution… when my new machine shows up I’m going install miniBatch, Batch, Caffeine Browser and perhaps ViewIt and try them out for a while. Please let me know in the comments if you know of a software package you think I’ve overlooked.

Please note: All versions reviewed were the latest available at the time this review was published. Software changes with each release, so these reviews may become outdated at any time.