Using Photoshop Actions as Droplets in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom
Photoshop has a feature called Actions. Actions are simply sets of instructions, also known as scripts or macros, that can be applied to an image or set of images. This post isn’t intended to describe all the things you can do with actions, or even how to create them, but rather to teach you how to make an action that you already have in Photoshop available to Lightroom.
Now, actions themselves (and their affiliated .atn files) aren’t directly accessible to Lightroom. What we have to do is push an image, or group of images, to Photoshop where the action is run. You can certainly select an image in Lightroom, choose Edit in Photoshop, then manually run the action once the image opens in Photoshop, but the whole point of Lightroom is to make your post-processing life easier and more efficient. Let’s look at a way to automate this.
Creating a Droplet
As I mentioned before, actions aren’t directly readable by Lightroom. The workaround for that is to create something called a droplet from our action. A droplet is a small executable program (.app file on a Mac or .exe file on a PC) that, when run, opens the applicable image(s) into Photoshop, runs the specified action, and completes any other tasks which were assigned to it when we created it. You’ll see what I mean in a moment.
To create a droplet:
- In Photoshop, make sure that you have at least one action available in the Actions Panel (formerly known as the Actions Palette).
- Choose File -> Automate -> Create Droplet… from the Menu Bar.
- Click the Choose button at the top to specify a location in which to save your droplet.
- I recommend you choose the desktop to make it easy to find later on. Choose a location in the dialog box and name your droplet. This name will be what we’ll see in Lightroom, so make sure it’s descriptive enough. Click OK. (I’m using the 50 pixel Wood Frame action that ships with Photoshop in its default actions set. Therefore, I’ve named my droplet Wood Frame – 50px.)
- Select the Set your action is in that you would like to create a droplet for. In my case, the set is Default Actions.
- Choose your action from the Action drop-down menu. I’ve chosen “Wood Frame – 50 pixel.”
- For this example, I’m leaving everything unchecked. Your decisions from here will really vary based on what your action is doing, why you’re doing it, when you want it done, etc. There will be additional tutorials on specific applications of this skill in the future.
- Click OK and your droplet will be saved in the location you specified in step 4 above.
The Actions Panel
If you don’t see the Actions Panel, choose Window -> Actions from the Menu Bar.
Choose Actions from the Window Menu
In the Actions Panel, you should see at least one Action Set (Folder icon) containing one or more Actions (right-facing triangle icon). If this is not what you see, you may want to reset the Actions Panel. Only do this if you haven’t created any actions of your own. If you need more help on creating an action, or with what’s going on in the Actions Panel, ask in the comments section below. To reset the Actions Panel, click on the small icon in the upper-right corner of Actions Panel and select Reset Actions from the menu.
Choose Create Droplet from the File, Automate Menu
Click Choose
Choose a location and name for your new droplet
Choose the Action Set
Choose the Action
Getting Access to that Droplet in Lightroom
Lightroom will allow you to specify a droplet to run with an image or group of images when you export. The last step in the Lightroom Export Dialog, Post Processing, is where we can specify a droplet to be run after export. Let’s go there now.
- Select an image from the Library Module in Lightroom, and choose File -> Export…
- Scroll down to the bottom of the Export Dialog (to the Post Processing section) and look at the After Export drop-down list.
- Our droplet is not available yet. We have to put that droplet in a specific location on our computer so Lightroom can read it. The easiest way to find that folder is to let Lightroom show it to us. From the After Export drop-down list, choose Go to Export Actions Folder Now.
- This will take us straight to the proper folder on our computer in which to place our droplet. Drag and drop your droplet (you like how I did that?) into that Export Actions folder in the Finder or Windows Explorer.
- Back in Lightroom, you should now see your droplet in the After Export drop-down list. If it’s not there, try clicking Cancel on the Export dialog, then re-open it and see if it’s there. Not there? You may have to quit and re-open Lightroom. It should be there now.
Choose Export from the File Menu
Post Processing section of the Export Dialog Box
Go to Export Actions Folder Now
Drag and Drop your Droplet
Your droplet in the list.
Calling up the Droplet in Lightroom
Once you’ve added the droplet to the Export Actions folder, it should always be available from the Export dialog. We’ll export an image now and send it straight to Photoshop with that droplet.
- Select an image in the Library Module in Lightroom.
- Choose Export
- I’m just exporting my image to the desktop in a folder called Action. You can put your settings however you see fit. The important setting for this demo is in the Post-Processing section. From the After Export drop-down list, choose your droplet. In the example below, mine’s called Wood Frame – 50px.
- Click Export. Your image will be exported and open in Photoshop. Your action will run.
The video below demonstrates several of the steps I described above:
Using Photoshop Actions as Droplets in Lightroom from Scott Rouse on Vimeo.
If you don’t have Flash enabled, or you’re viewing this on a portable device such as the iPhone, you can view the YouTube version of the above video here. If you have a choice, however, I recommend the High Definition Vimeo version above.
That’s the very basics of running a Photoshop action on an image from Lightroom. Think about the ways you can use that skill:
- Run that droplet on a group of images on export.
- Setup a Lightroom Export Preset that will send a copy of an image to Photoshop, run an action, save it, then re-import that new image back into the Lightroom Catalog.
- Setup an Export Preset that will resize images for a website, send them to Photoshop for a fancy watermark, and save them as web-ready JPEGs.
The opportunities are quite numerous. We’ll be back later to help demonstrate some of those techniques.
If you have any questions or suggestions, please feel free to let us know in the comments section.
Filed Under: (07) Exporting • (11) Using Lightroom and Adobe Photoshop CS5 • Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Tutorials
About the Author: Scott Rouse is an Adobe Certified Expert (ACE), photographer, teacher, and graphic- and web-designer in Missoula, MT. His photography focuses on wildlife and adventure sports and can be viewed at 
I have the answer for the “droplet couldn’t communicate with Photoshop” error. The previous were close …
set Photoshop to “run as administrator” but DO NOT set the droplet that way.
If you set the droplet that way every time it starts you get the yellow Windows dialog that says ‘allow this program to make changes to your computer?’
I hope that makes sense
Dear Ofcbob,
Thanks for sharing the solution. Oh the endless mysteries of the Windows operating system :>
–
David Marx
Hey man,
Flipping brilliant info you have here. I’ve been looking for that kind of thing for quite a while now….
Thanks so much for sharing this….
Hey Scott: Thank you very much for this! I’m new to droplet as well as LR and I really appreciate it! I’m having an issue with the file names. So I exported several images from LR and processed them via droplet, it doesn’t keep the original files names. I tried clicking the” overwrite”save as”… thing but still not working.
(What I was trying to do is I what to put a special frame on all the images, so I set up the actions: open an image, copy & paste to the frame file, move layer down, merge layers, save as, close.)
So after droplet all the files are named as the frame file. I want to be able to keep the original file name and just add “_s” at the end.
Do you have any idea what went wrong with me??
Thank you very much!!
Mike
David,
Thank you so much for getting back to me on this. Yes what your saying does seem a bit in depth for my skill level. you had mentioned vista/windows 7. I feel im working in the stone ages here. Im running XP,CS2 and as of a week ago lightroom was added to the mix. With my photo editing and batch processing work flow i have developed a good rhythm with in my work flow with basic edits in Bridge/Camera raw and then image processor with some post production actions incorporated. It was my intent that upgrading to using lightroom in order to make this work flow even more simplified but from what your saying it sounds like i added a new step.
I tried the test you mentioned above and when i drop the photos onto the droplet icon it opens photoshop and that’s ALL.
I found some forums regarding this on the adobe site as well but never really any resolutions. It just may be that i accept the multi program work flow for now till i can upgrade my entire system. If any other advice comes to mind great if not then i do appreciate your help i have found this site a GREAT source for learning lightroom.
best regards
Charles Hidde
Id like to update my post.
I have been working on this issue and reading forums and posts all over the internet and it seems the problem is my droplets are not working. Yet i cant find an answer in any of the forums. would anyone here have some feedback as to why my droplets are not working?
Dear Charles Hidde,
You are messing around with some complicated stuff for a Lightroom novice. There are lots of reasons why your droplets might not work. Option one is that you made a mistake in the action / droplet creation. You can test this possibility though by selecting a folder of images and dragging it over the droplet’s icon. Option two is that the trouble is in your Window’s permissions.
To use Droplets on Vista / Widows 7, make sure that Photoshop and the Droplet.exe are running at the same level of User Access Control. If Photoshop is elevated to run as administrator then the droplet exe must be elevated as well. You will find lots of suggestions on how to solve your Windows permission issues in previous comments on this post and in this help doc from Adobe. As if this wasn’t complicated enough there are also issues with 32-bit / 64-bit compatibility for both Mac and PC users working with droplets.
I don’t mean to discourage you here. Droplets can be a great help and a huge time-saver but this is not easy stuff. If all you are doing is batch noise reduction and light global sharpening then you might be better off learning to do these things within Lightroom’s develop module. Synchronizing changes from one image to another or creating a develop preset might accomplish the same goals without nearly as much frustration.
If all else fails, you could do all of your initial edits and raw development work in Lightroom then export a copy of each image (probably best to save the copy as a .tif file). Open this folder full of files using the Adobe Bridge then use the Image Processor to run your old actions. It means a little bit more work since you have to use both programs but it is a lot less frustrating then figuring out Window’s permissions system or working with Rosetta on the Mac.
Best of luck,
David Marx
I have just recently moved into the world of LR and am a total greenhorn here. Until now all my photo post production has been with CS2 Bridge/ACR. I realize I’m getting close to being left behind with current software’s and that’s one reason i have updated to LR.
A brief explanation of my old work flow was after doing basic edits to all my images in ACR i would then use the image processor in bridge to automate all my actions. Mainly noise filters and sharpening. I have went through this article and created some trial droplets and imported them into LR and when i run them (Export-post processing dropdown) LR does everything in the the export but the droplet(actions) do not take affect. I have tried this with various actions with no luck. Could you give some advice on this mater.
Thank you Charles
Dear Rush,
Thanks for the tip. Ah, Windows and your insane permission system! Glad your droplets are working.
–
David
UPDATE : For CS5 And LR3. Got the same “droplet couldn’t communicate with photoshop” error again.
Found a much easier solution, again from Adobe forums.
After creating the droplet “.exe” file, for example MyPsDroplet.exe
1. Locate the droplet file I have just created with Windows Explorer
2. Right-click on that file and select “Properties”
3. A dialog box will appear with the title MyPsDroplet.exe
4. Checks the checkbox that stated “Run this program as an administrator” and then the “OK” button
It works like a charm.
[...] started to follow them. It was to my delight that the very next day, on TheLightroomLab.com this amazing tutorial with screenshots and video was published on the short topic we discussed via Twitter. [...]
[...] first, you should read this tutorial. I use Kevin Kubota’s BW GM Warm 2 and Snappy Action at about 30%. So, I want to save a [...]
Hi Scott. Great post, thanks! I’m running into an issue with droplets, however, and I was wondering if you knew of a workaround. On some of my actions, I include “stops” in order to fine tune a particular setting or to mask out part of the effect I’m doing. When I try to do a batch run using a droplet (from LR to PS), I find that when a stop comes up and I choose to stop it (instead of continue), it shuts down the whole droplet. What are your thoughts? Do you know of a way that I can include the stops and not shutdown the droplet batch processing? Thanks in advance.
Over 10,000 action at
http://refont.com/photoshop-action/index.php
enjoy it!
Thanks for your thoughtful response, Paul. That is great information to have…and something I didn’t consider.
-Scott Rouse
One important thing to note when exporting a large group of images via a droplet are the limits imposed by the Windows command linen (not sure how OSx handles this). The way lightroom passes the selected images to the droplet in windows is to call the droplet (.exe file in windows environment)passing the file names as a long list on the back of that command. If there are a lot of files selected, and your export path is a long one to begin with, then the command line breaches the length limit imposed by the Windows OS and the droplet export fails. (For geeks – I am guessing that the limit of around 2048 characters is imposed by Lightroom’s use of the ShellExexute command, or 8192 imposed by cmd.exe). One way around this I use is a slightly convoluted method but it works every time:
Instead of setting up the export to call the droplet, I simply export to a pre-defined folder – say for example c:\exports. I then have a shortcut setup which calls the droplet file passing the name of this folder as a switch, so for example whatever_droplet.exe c:\exports.
This keeps the path short and it will process all files in that folder, saving them to whichever location/path is defined in your original action.
Another method I use which avoids droplets all together, is to do a Ctrl-S to save out sidecar files, then browse the export folder in Bridge, choosing the Image processor script from the photoshop menu – running through the required action from there. This way there is no intermediate file being exported from LR, as PS reads in the RAW files directly, using the sidecar for image settings, runs the action and saves as whatever format you choose in Image processor. All thanks to Dr Brown!
Cheers, Paul A
This bit of tech support might help Vista users who are having trouble with droplets.
” Using Droplets on Vista
To use Droplets on Vista, make sure that Photoshop and the Droplet exe are running at the same level of User Access Control. If Photoshop is elevated to run as administrator the droplet exe should be elevated as well. If Photoshop is not running elevated, the default configuration of a droplet will work as expected. ”
source:
http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/401/kb401448.html#A8
Julieanne Kost, Adobe Evangelist and digital photography super star, recently recorded this wonderful tutorial on using actions and droplets to connect Photoshop and Lightroom.
Lindsay-
For your specific needs, putting the same logo on top of your photos, that droplets are one solution. The other solution that you might want to play with is the LR2/Mogrify export plug-in. You can see it in action here.
http://thelightroomlab.com/2009/08/the-lr2mogrify-plug-in-for-adobe-photoshop-lightroom/
David
Thanks, Lindsay. You’ll need a save/close command at the end of the droplet for it to work.
Think of it this way: Lightroom produces a file of whatever type/size you specify in the export dialog. It then sends that file to Photoshop and tells Photoshop to run the specified action on that photo. That’s it. At that point, it’s out of Lightroom’s hands. Your Photoshop action controls it from there.
Let me know if you have any more questions.
-Scott
Hi Scott!
I didn’t even realize this was yours until I got to the video. Thanks for taking the time to write this up but… I can’t get it to work for me. The action works well in photoshop but the file is saved through Lightroom as if I hadn’t even picked a droplet.
It’s a watermarking action that pulls a psd file from another folder onto a jpg, aligns it, flattens it, and then changes the resolution and size of the image.
Running the droplet from LR seems to ignore everything – no logo, no resolution or size change. I don’t have any save commands in place, is that the problem? I figured the LR export would naturally take care of that.
Any ideas?
Carlie,
You can record opacity changes to layers and the Fade command as part of an action in Photoshop. You’d record it with the action and then save that as a droplet. There’s no way to take a certain droplet and run it at 30% or something.
-Scott
Hey Scott,
Just wondering if I can create a droplet with an action at 30% strength, or does it have to be 100%? Please tell me I can!
Thanks for all your great information.
Carlie
Rush,
Thanks for your detailed comment on this issue. It’s been a frustrating one, for sure!
-Scott
Yes vista & windows7 have a problem where nothing works. I found this on adobe forum. The steps taken to resolve the problem were as follows:
1. Renaming the CS4 preferences folder to ‘.old’ – This is located at C:\Users\\Appdata\Roaming\Adobe\Photoshop CS4\Adobe Photoshop CS4 Settings. Apparently uninstalling and reinstalling PS does not affect this folder, so by renaming it, it forces PS to create a new one.
2. Turn off Vista User Account Control
3. Create a new user account (administrator level) & Restart
4. In the new user account, Open PS and create a new droplet to the desktop
5. Tested the new droplet by dropping an image onto it It now works.
6. Logged off (specifically told not to use switch user), and logged back on with normal account.
7. Created a new droplet in PS onto the desktop It now works when you drop an image onto it.
8. Turned Vista User Account Control back on, and retested OK.
According to Adobe these steps resolve quite a number of different issues with Vista and PS. He put it down to a permissions issue with Vista.
Thanks Scott. This was a great refresher tutorial. Is there a way to scale a watermark so that it’s the same proportion for both horizontal and vertical photos?
Thanks for this tip. Is there any way to set up either the action or the export filter in such a way that the file is saved back into the same folder and imported into the Lightroom catalog? I want to be able to simply run the process and have the image back in Lightroom with the action applied.
Unfortunately, there’s no direct link to import actions from Photoshop. Those actions must be turned into a droplet for use from Lightroom.
An “Export Action” in Lightroom is not the same as an “Action” in Photoshop. You can use an action that you’ve turned into a droplet in the Export Actions in Lightroom, even with a save and close command. The open command would be unnecessary.
Hi Sir;
Thanks for teaching me how to capture ACTION under PS in a droplet to use under LR. My question is instead of create a droplet and put it in DESKTOP first and then IMPORT to EXPORT ACTION under LR.,can I directly import an action from PS’s action panel into LR’s EXPORT ACTION folder and ready to use it?
My second question is that since every time I include OPEN, SAVE and CLOSE in each of the ACTIONS, Is it the reason why it did not work under the EXPORT ACTION in LR?
Thanks
Joseph,
I’m not sure what the issue may be. I’ll keep checking around for some more information. Thanks for your input, though.
-Scott
Hmm, in Vista as well, CS3 opens, but the image doesn’t open inside it.
I tested out opening the image in another app (Google Chrome) by just placing a shortcut to the program in the Export Actions folder, and it opened in that browser. I know CS3 is one of the default options but I also added a shortcut to “Adobe Photoshop CS3″ in that folder and it opened correctly in there.
So, I think the issue is in the droplet creation somewhere, but my error log that I enabled in the bottom of the droplet creation dialog is non-existent.
Any ideas?
Regardless,
Thanks for all the content!
You can also use a droplet as an external editor, so you can send a picture to Photoshop, have PS do some stuff to it, and have the result still managed by Lightroom for additional Lightroom processing/management.
Definitely frustrating. I’ll keep an eye out for a solution and send some peeps this way to see if they have any input.
OK thanks Scott. i will do some searching around in my setting on my machine and see if i can figure it out. frustrating when you just want to run a watermark action
Mike,
There are issues with droplets in Vista. It has to do with the UAC (User Access Control) settings, I believe. I don’t use Vista, personally, but I can say that I’ve gotten it to work on a few Vista machines here and there, but it usually does not. I don’t have enough Vista time to have figured out what makes and/or prevents it from happening. Sorry.
-Scott
scott,
i have created a droplet as stated, but when i run the export action CS3 opens then i get an error message saying that cs3 had an error and need to close, windows is checking for a solution to the problem? i am running vista 32 bit home premium. the exact same droplet and action work fine on a friends computer running windows xp. and suggestions or is it just a windows vista problem?
Thanks, Mike, for your great blog post at Randomn3ss!
You bet. I’m always looking for suggestions for articles and tutorials.
Thanks,
Scott
@TheLightroomLab
Thanks for taking the time to write this out with screenshots and a video. I plan on using this to export out of LR and run the batch action in PS that resizes my images for web and watermarks them, it just gets rid of the tedious step of opening files in PS manually and then running actions. Again thanks! And to think, this all spawned from a short Twitter convo!
Great post! Now all I need are some *usefull* actions to apply this to!