Using Photoshop Actions as Droplets in 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: Enhancing (Advanced) • Exporting Images • Tutorials • Working with Photoshop
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 
Great post! Now all I need are some *usefull* actions to apply this to!
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!
You bet. I’m always looking for suggestions for articles and tutorials.
Thanks,
Scott
@TheLightroomLab
Thanks, Mike, for your great blog post at Randomn3ss!
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?
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
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
Definitely frustrating. I’ll keep an eye out for a solution and send some peeps this way to see if they have any input.
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.
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!
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
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
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.
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.
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?
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.
Rush,
Thanks for your detailed comment on this issue. It’s been a frustrating one, for sure!
-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
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
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?
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
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
Julieanne Kost, Adobe Evangelist and digital photography super star, recently recorded this wonderful tutorial on using actions and droplets to connect Photoshop and Lightroom.
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
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
Thanks for your thoughtful response, Paul. That is great information to have…and something I didn’t consider.
-Scott Rouse
Over 10,000 action at
http://refont.com/photoshop-action/index.php
enjoy it!
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.