The Unknown Power of Photoshop Droplets

Droplets live on your desktop and you can drag and drop files or folders onto them to batch process the files based on the action you’ve set up for the specific droplet. This video shows you how to build your own. 

I saw these weird-looking icons on a monitor at a retouching and post-production agency and asked what they were. It basically came down to little actions I have now made one for saving files for web-use, that are 72 dpi compressed to reduce file size. I use it to send over selects to clients, where they don’t need to see it in full-size, and will mainly view it on their monitors at their office. I’ve made one that applies one of my grades and saves to a PSD so I can go in and still change it’s strength should I need to. 

Other uses for droplets could be to render raw files to JPG, or to save it in various sizes or crops, like you would need for an Instagram story versus a square post. 

It’s not a commonly used tool, but I think if you can automate certain tasks without having to open up Photoshop to do it, it’s a win. Do you use droplets, and if you do, what type of actions have you used in your droplets? Please share it in the comments. 

Photo by Peter Fogden on Unsplash

Wouter du Toit's picture

Wouter is a portrait and street photographer based in Paris, France. He's originally from Cape Town, South Africa. He does image retouching for clients in the beauty and fashion industry and enjoys how technology makes new ways of photography possible.

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you can just skip droplets all together and batch process all your images using adobe bridge, just as long as you target your action from the drop down menu. ;-)

thanks! very very useful! will try this in a while

Awesome!!! Works great! already tested on my PC. just drag and drop images on PS droplet file and u r done!

Interesting option, didn't know that Photoshop has something like this and I use it for a while now ;) Thanks for sharing :)