Use your editing app’s batch or apply-to-multiple feature to run one saved edit across a whole folder of scans in one go, rather than repeating the same steps on each photo individually.
What you need
- A folder of similar scanned photos that need the same kind of fix (for example, all a bit dark, or all slightly crooked)
- An editing app with a batch-processing feature — Photoshop Elements has this built in as an Action or the Batch Process tool; Google Photos does not support true batch editing of individual adjustments
- 20 to 40 minutes depending on how many photos
Group photos by problem first
Batch editing works best when the photos genuinely share the same problem — for example, a whole roll of film that all came out slightly yellow. If your photos have very different issues, batch editing one fix onto all of them can make some look worse, so sort them into similar groups first.
How to batch-edit the group
- Go through the folder once and group the photos by problem — for example, all the ones that are too dark in one group, all the ones with a colour cast in another.
- Open one representative photo from a group and fix it manually first, adjusting brightness, contrast or colour until it looks right. Note down or save the exact settings you used.
- In Photoshop Elements, open the Actions panel (Window, then Actions), click the record button, then repeat the same edit steps you just worked out — this records them as a reusable Action.
- Stop recording once the edit is applied, then use File, Process Multiple Files, choose the Action you just recorded, select the folder of similar photos, and choose a separate output folder so the originals are not overwritten.
- Run the batch process, then check the results — they will all have exactly the same adjustment applied.
- Repeat this process for each group of photos that shares a different problem.
Check a sample of the results
Open a handful of the newly batch-edited photos at random and check they look right — not too dark, not too light, no strange colour shift. Because every photo in the group gets the exact same adjustment, spot-checking a few is usually enough to catch a group that was wrongly sorted.
If some photos look worse
If some photos in a batch look worse than before, they probably did not belong in that group — pull them out and either edit them individually or make a new, more accurately sorted group. If your app does not support batch editing at all, applying the same manual adjustment to each photo individually, while slower, is still much quicker once you know the exact settings to use each time.
Next step
Once your scans are edited, Build a simple timeline for a family photo collection or Set naming rules the whole family can follow for new photos are natural next steps for organising the results.
Sources and date checked
Adobe Photoshop Elements Help documentation for Actions and Process Multiple Files. Checked 22 September 2026. Researched from current app documentation, not run as a hands-on batch test on a real folder for this article.