How to batch edit hundreds of photos with consistent colors?

The thing is, you probably don't need to edit hundreds of photos - most of the time a solid preset or two will get you most of the way there. Lightroom's batch editing is your best bet; just select all your photos, apply a preset or adjust exposure/white balance/saturation on one, and sync those settings across the whole batch. If you're working with something more specific, Capture One does similar work and gives you finer control. For the really stubborn ones that need individual tweaking, you can always pull them out after the bulk edit rather than fighting with each one from the start.

Presets will only get you halfway there if your lighting conditions vary much between shots. I've dealt with plenty of jobs where you've got photos from different times of day or indoor/outdoor mix, and a one-size-fits-all preset just tanks the quality. Lightroom's definitely the right tool, but you'll want to shoot for a base edit on a few representative photos first, then sync those settings across similar batches grouped by lighting. If the photos are all over the place, you might need to spend an afternoon doing a rough manual pass on maybe 10-15 key shots just to dial in what works, then let the batch sync handle the rest.

If your shots are all over the place lighting-wise, you'll want to use Lightroom's auto tone feature first - it's surprisingly good at normalizing exposure across a batch before you apply any presets. Then mask out specific areas if needed; that's where the real time savings happen instead of tweaking each photo individually. Syncing settings between similar shots (same location, same time window) beats trying one preset for everything.