How The 2016 Getty Batch Edit Unlocked 40 Minutes

On May 12, 2016, Getty Images editors in London faced a queue of 200 photos from the Chelsea Flower Show, each requiring near-identical tweaks. Instead of opening files one-by-one, the team launched Adobe Lightroom’s batch edit mode, applying global saturation, crop, and exposure settings in a single sequence. They then used the sync function to adjust these settings across every image simultaneously before fine-tuning only the outliers. The entire batch was exported in one step. By the end, the Getty team had shaved 40 minutes off their usual edit time for that assignment, all by using one uninterrupted editing block.