Workflow Automation

Photoshop Droplets: The Automation Tool You're Probably Ignoring
Workflow Automation

Photoshop Droplets: The Automation Tool You're Probably Ignoring

A few years back I took on a product photography contract for a mid-sized e-commerce brand. Three hundred SKUs, white background, consistent color profile, two export sizes each. Six hundred files total. The client needed them in 48 hours. I’d built the action sequence over the weekend before, tested it on a sample set, and felt good going into Monday morning. What I hadn’t planned for was how many times I’d need to manually trigger that action, folder by folder, because I’d set it up as a standard batch process through Photoshop’s automation menu rather than as a droplet.

How I Built a Batch System That Processed 500 Product Shots in One Afternoon
Workflow Automation

How I Built a Batch System That Processed 500 Product Shots in One Afternoon

There’s a specific kind of misery that comes from doing the same Photoshop crop 200 times in a single day. I know because I lived it. Early in my career, before I understood what Photoshop could actually do for me, I sat in a studio chair for eight hours resizing product images one at a time, clicking File > Export, typing a filename, clicking Save, and doing it again. By image 140, I had started making errors.

Photoshop Droplets: The Batch Processing Tool You're Probably Ignoring
Workflow Automation

Photoshop Droplets: The Batch Processing Tool You're Probably Ignoring

A few years back I had a client send over 500 product shots on a Friday afternoon. New colorway launches for an e-commerce catalog, all needing the same sequence: resize to 2000px on the long edge, convert to sRGB, sharpen with a specific Smart Sharpen value, save as JPEG at quality 9 into a web-ready folder. Same thing, 500 times. I had a weekend. I also had a droplet I’d built in about 40 minutes the month before.

How I Built a Batch Automation System That Processed 500 Product Shots in One Afternoon
Workflow Automation

How I Built a Batch Automation System That Processed 500 Product Shots in One Afternoon

The job came in on a Thursday. Five hundred product images, all needing the same treatment: background removal, shadow drop, color correction to a specific brand profile, resize to 2000x2000 at 72dpi, and export as sRGB JPEGs under 500KB each. The client needed them by Monday morning. A few years ago, that would have meant a miserable weekend. Instead, I had them done by 4pm Friday and spent the rest of the afternoon with my kids.