A few years ago I made a decision in Photoshop that is affecting me greatly today. I chose to save my Photoshop (PSD) files with Maximize Compatibility (MC) turned off. MC saves a flattened version of your file along with the layered version. The advantage of this feature is that older versions of Photoshop or other Adobe programs that don't support layers can still read the files. The disadvantage is that MC can easily double the size of your files. So my thinking was "why double the size of my files and waste hard drive space when I will never need this compatibility?"

That thinking worked very well for me until Lightroom came along. You see, Lightroom also cannot read layered files, so it needs that flattened version. So now we need MC. And yes, it does increase the size of our files, but that is ok -- storage space is cheaper now, and it is worth it for what Lightroom gives us.

To make sure that MC is turned on, in Photoshop on a PC go to Edit>Preferences>File Handling or on a Mac, Photoshop>Preferences File Handling. The option "Maximize PSD and PSB File Compatibility" should be set to Always, or to Ask if you want to be prompted to make a decision with each save you do. If this is the way you have always had it set, or if you are not sure but you have already imported old PSD files into Lightroom and you have not had compatibility errors, then you will not need the rest of this post, which deals with going back to old PSD files and resaving them with MC on so that you can import them into Lightroom.

If you try to import a PSD file into Lightroom that wasn't saved with MC turned on, you will be informed that Lightroom cannot import it and that you must resave it with MC on. If this happens, once you have changed the preference as explained above, open your old file, go to File>Save As (not Save) and hit Enter or Return so that it is resaved with MC on. Only then will you be able to successfully import it.

But what if you, like me, have hundreds or thousands of PSD files saved with MC off and want to import them? I can't imagine opening and resaving them one at a time. Fortunately with an action and batch processing we can do them all at once. Before we get further into this though, a word of caution: as you resave all these old files with MC on, the files will get larger. So make sure you have a substantial amount of free space on your hard drive that contains your images, or during the automated process you may run out of space. If you don't have free space, transfer your images to a larger hard drive first.

First we will work on the action:

• If you haven't already done so, go into Photoshop and change the MC preference to Always (not Ask, or you will not be able to walk away from the batch processing.)
• Close Photoshop and reopen to activate the preference change.
• If your actions palette isn't open, go to Window>Actions. If you see buttons rather than a list of actions, click on the menu symbol in the top right of the palette and choose Button Mode to turn it off.
• Open any Photoshop document.
• In the Actions palette, click on the folder icon at the bottom to create a new set of actions. Call it "Actions for LR"
• Click on the New Action icon to the left of the trash can, and call the action "save with MC". All steps you do in Photoshop now will be recorded, until you stop the action.
• Go to File>Save As and hit Enter/Return without renaming the file.
• Go to File>Close.
• In the actions palette, click on the Stop Recording icon.
• Check your action in the actions palette -- you should only have two steps -- Save and Close, as I have below. If there are more steps because you went on to do other things before stopping the recording, highlight the extras and drag to the trash can.

Now we need to find our old PSD files. I have a Pictures folder, year folders within this, and individual shoot folders within these.

I am going to do one year at a time, starting with 2008. (I could do my entire Pictures folder at once, but that is putting too many eggs in one basket for me.)

• In Bridge, go to Edit>Find, and choose your first folder (2008 for me) as the source.
• Set the rest of the settings as follows to find all your PSD files in the folder you specified and all of its subfolders:

• Hit Find. This may take quite a while if the folder and its subfolders contain many files.

Now we will run our action on all the images, using batch processing.

• Select all of the found images, with Ctl/Cmd A or Edit>Select All.
• Go to Tools>Photoshop>Batch
• Set your settings as I have below:

Hit OK. The process will now open, resave and close each of your files. Depending on how many you have, this could take hours.

When it finishes, you are ready to import your images into Lightroom. In the Lightroom Import dialog, I will choose 2008 and have it import all subfolders.

Next, I'll find my 2007 PSD files, run the batch process on them, import them into Lightroom, etc... Yes, it will take quite a while, but at least I can walk away during most of it. And when it is done, my Lightroom library will finally be complete.