Occasionally, you may run across a product or service that you didn’t really know you needed until you were introduced to its existence. These Eureka! discoveries are quite satisfying as they usually make life easier or more streamlined. PhotoBulk, an app from Eltima Software, plops itself directly into this camp.
If you’re a “photo bug” or interested in giving your photo library a professional feel, you’ll most definitely want to check it out. Let’s talk about its appeal after the jump!
Using the App
PhotoBulk is a fairly tiny app. When you open it, what is displayed is simply a charcoal-grey box asking you to drag-and-drop some images onto it. Once you’ve added some images, you decide which of PhotoBulk’s three features you want to employ: watermarking, resizing, and/or optimizing PNG or JPEG files.
While simple, you have you admit that PhotoBulk is a good looking app.
Click each option on the main bar opens up a corresponding drop-down pane. The watermark pane splits the photo into nine sections, allowing you to choose the best place for your tag.
The PhotoBulk menu is not flush with options, but it’s not necessarily trying to reinvent the wheel.
If you’ve dragged multiple pictures onto the main pane (kind of the point), then the watermark will be added in the same location for all the photos. The fonts available for the watermark are those found in your Fontbook so if you have added any third-party fonts, they’re all here. You can also choose the color and opacity of your watermark.
Here’s a sample of the PhotoBulk-applied watermark using a third-party font. Not bad eh?
The other panes are much simpler. The “Bulk Resize” pane does as its name implies, but only allows you to change either the height or width, thereby cornering you into keeping the original photo’s aspect ratio–probably not a bad idea in general.
PhotoBulk keeps resizing idiot-proof by forcing you to keep the aspect ratio. Now you don’t have to worry about distorting your photos.
The optimization pane preps your photos for the Web, either as PNGs or JPEGs (or both!). When you’re good to go, click the eye icon on the main bar to get a brief preview. If your photos are ready for primetime, the green Start button on the main pane will proceed with the magic and output the photo to the folder of your choice.
Criticism
Before I write any more, let me acknowledge that there are other apps that can do what PhotoBulk does. Adobe Photoshop, for example is capable of automatically adding watermarks via its Action Scripts feature. Apple’s own Preview app is able to resize multiple photos at once. And both can optimize for the Web. I think the crux of the consider for PhotoBulk is its ease of use and lean, mean, speed.
I threw some large wallpapers from OS X Mountain Lion at PhotoBulk but it happily spit them out in seconds as newly optimized and watermarked images.
I really like the simplicity, but I did find myself wanting a few more features. If a future iteration kept its beauty and ease-of-use but added a few more photo tweaks like automatic color correction, red eye removal, and/or cropping, it would replace iPhoto (for me at least).
Pricing
The other factor to consider when eying an application like PhotoBulk is price. At first glance, you may recoil at the stout price of $9.99 for the ability to tweak a few photos, but for the right audience, purchasing PhotoBulk will make sense. To its credit, other apps cut from a similar cloth are at least $10: Photo Batch is $14.99; Adobe Photoshop is 30 times that price; and even though Preview is free, it doesn’t watermark photos.
Conclusion
At the end of the day, is PhotoBulk right for you? Well, it depends who you are. If you want to add a professional watermark to your photos without paying for Photoshop, then you may find exactly what you’re looking for. I’ll say this for the app: it’s a lightning fast utility with a snazzy UI. I’ll leave the decision to you.
But hey, would you like to try PhotoBulk for free? If so, we’ve got 10 copies of it free for our readers! Just leave a comment below and tell us why you’re excited about trying out PhotoBulk, and optionally tweet a link to this article and comment with a link to the tweet for an extra entry. We’ll close the giveaway on November 24th, so be sure to hurry and get your entry in!