Creating a Droplet with Photoshop

In my last post I covered the basics of optimizing images for the web. Now I will go over how to automate that workflow for contributors or whatnot.

Raindrops are falling on my head...

Creating the droplet

First we must create the actions that we wish to incorporate into our droplet:

1. Open action tab (alt+F9 brings it up)
2. Create new action set. Name it whatever you want, I called mine "Web Optimization".

Create new action set

    


  3. Create new action. Name it whatever you want, I named mine "optimize and save".
          Once you click record it will begin recording your actions so that they can be duplicated         
          later upon calling this action . (You can pause recording at the bottom of the actions panel.)

  

        4. Then proceed to optimize as seen in the last blog post.
        5. Once this is complete, then click the stop button at the bottom of the pane.
        6. Then File->Automate->Create Droplet...
      At this point you will encounter the dialog shown below:

 Ensure that you save it somewhere you can find with the "choose" button.
The destination defaults to "Save and close" but I prefer "Folder". This way you can create a naming convention that works well. Additionally I recommend checking the box for linux file name compatibility since that is likely where it will be hosted.

This whole process creates an .exe that you then can merely drag files onto and it will optimize the files, and save them according to the naming convention that you have created. Even a non technical person can now optimize their own content. 

Additionally this could be used to automate any number of other tasks.