Batch has been around for a long time in Photoshop. I used to create Droplets in Image Ready when it was separate from Photoshop in version 5.  Once a Droplet is created you drag a folder of files onto the Droplet icon and it then opens Photoshop to process the whole folder. It came in very handy when I used to process 300+ avatars daily for a chat program.

As for adding bmps to Photoshop I think the images has to be sequenced first. You can import the whole sequence at once.