Hi WG
The thing with ‘Release sales order picking’ is that it helps with the problem of releasing sales orders to the warehouse where there is no stock. I do not think there is any comparable functionality which can be batched.
There maybe a hotfix for 2012 R2 which could help with your scenario where setting the criteria is slow. Perhaps you could log an inquiry with Microsoft and support could determine if this hotfix would be helpful. (It appears the hotfix is included with R2 CU6).