Hi I'm Glyn Dewis, and in this video I want to show you how you can really speed up your
work flow in Photoshop, using something called Droplets.
Okay, so if you've used Photoshop for a while you're more than likely aware, or at least
have heard of something called Actions.
Actions in Photoshop basically allow us to record a series of steps, and then be able
to do them again at any time in the future, but instead of having to do the steps again,
we can just click once on our "Play" button.
Now, just for the purpose of demonstration in this video here, what we're going to do
is have a bit of a refresher first of all, on Actions.
Let's just say that before I send images over to the publishers, I have to perform a hue
and saturation adjustment on them, where we colorize them, and really boost up the reds.
I've got an image open on screen.
What we'll do is we'll just go to the window menu, let's just click on the "Window menu",
and we choose "Actions" to bring up the Actions panel.
Now, in here you can see there's 2 folders, again this is just a refresher here.
2 folders, one called "Default actions", and then one that I've called "Glyn's actions".
In the default actions there's loads here that come already with Photoshop regular tasks
that you might want to perform, in my folder here called "Glyn's actions", there's 2 actions
here that I perform regularly.
We're going to create a new action here, and we're going to save it in my folder called
"Glyn's actions".
We'll click on the "New action" icon here, and we're going to call it, "Boost reds".
Now, when I click "Record", everything I do now, every step that I perform is now being
recorded.
We'll say we need to go to "Image adjustments: hue and saturation", this is the pretend task
that I need to do a lot.
We then click on "Colorize", we'll really change up the hue there, and we'll boost the
saturation as well.
It's really obvious that we have to do something here, then we'll click "Okay".
Then I want to click the "Stop" button here.
Now, if we just open up this little thing, you can see all this here, all this information
just here, this is listing all the steps that I've just done.
If I rewind here, let's just imagine we've opened a new image, all I would need to
do to perform that, is click on the action that we want to use, and then click on the
"Play" button, and bang!
You can see it's been done.
Now, it might be that you want to perform this on just one image, but then again, it
might be that you have a whole folder of images that you want to use it for.
Now, that's going to be something called "Batch processing", and we can do that within Photoshop,
by going to the "File" menu, choosing "Automate", and then we have an option here called "Batch".
This brings up a dialogue box where we can choose what action we want to use, what folder
we want to perform it on, and then where we want to save it.
We also, if you maybe someone who uses Bridge, you could then go to the "Tools menu", "Photoshop",
and then again we've got "Batch", that will then bring up the same dialogue box back up
in Photoshop.
That's all well and good, but the idea behind this, is to really speed up our work flow.
If we're having to click on menus and go into different dialogue boxes, that's adding more
steps to the work flow, and it's going against what we're trying to do here.
That's not really what we want to do.
Now, what we can do though, is use these thing called Droplets that I mentioned.
What we're going to do is this, we're going to go to the "File" menu, and then we're going
to go to "Automate", and then we're going to the third option down called "Create Droplets".
Now, it brings up a similar dialogue box to that one that was for batch processing, but
the first option over on the left hand side here, if I just highlight that for you there,
says, "Save droplet in".
Now this is where you want the droplet, the icon that we're going to use, where do you
want it to be?
My option is always to have them saved on the desktop.
In fact, you can see just 2 of them, just here.
That one there, and this one here, these are droplets.
I like to save them on my desktop, it's called "Reds boost", and we'll click
"Save".
The next section down, it says, "Play what action that you want to perform for this droplet".
Well, it's in my "Glyn's actions" folder, and it's going to be the one called "Boost
Reds", and then we've got "Destination".
Now, this is where you can either get Photoshop to do what I'm going to do now, which is open
the images, perform the hue and saturation change, save them, and then close them in
the same folder.
It might be, that you have a lot of original pictures, you need to perform a task to them,
once it's actually done that, you want to save them in a different folder, so you've
still got the originals there.
You can also do that, within here just by saying to choose different folder names.
It's really, really handy, but I'm going to leave this one here to save and close and
click "Okay".
Now, let's just dive over to my desktop again, and now we can see if I just zoom in, over
on the right hand side here, you can see there's this little icon, this is the droplet icon,
and it's called "Reds boost".
The great thing about this is, I've also got a folder of images here.
These are all the images I need to now send over to the publishers, and there's quite a
few in there.
I don't need to open them individually, all I'm going to have do now, is just grab the
folder, drag it, and drop it, hence the name droplet, onto the droplet icon, and then let
go.
Now it looks like nothing's really happening, but all all those actions that appear on those
images, are being performed in the background.
The great thing now, is it allows you now to carry on doing the more creative stuff.
You might carry on doing some writing, you might go to your eMails, you might need to
go and find something on the internet, whatever, it doesn't matter.
All those repetitive tasks that needed to be done, they're all being done for you.
Just to show you that now, if I just double click on this little folder here, you can
see all the images in there, let's just zoom in.
have had the hue and saturation change done to them in super quick time.
You can see that there, is droplets and how they can really speed up your work flow.
Now, you can see that on my desktop here, I already had 2 droplets on here already,
let's just zoom in to show you those.
One called Loxley color, and one called Rocky Nook.
Now, the Loxley color one, that's the printing app that I use.
There's always something that I like to do to my images to get them to look perfect.
The color is always going to look great anyway, because of color collaboration and what have
you.
I always find I need to boost the brightness in them by 20%, before I send them to be printed.
When I've got a load of images, may be out of Lightroom in a folder, drag them onto
the Loxley color droplet, and then send out to be printed, and they come back perfect.
The Rocky Nook one here, the publishers, every single image that goes into my new book,
has to be converted to CMYK, and also has to have a bit of a color profile change as
well.
There's a lot of images may be 90 in each chapter.
All I need to do, drag them onto that droplet, then it does it for me in the background,
while I get on with the more important stuff.
There you go, that's droplets and how they can potentially save you a huge amount of
time, by speeding up your work flow, and handing over the repetitive tasks to Photoshop, for
you to get on with the more creative stuff.
Now, don't forget if you'd like the files I used in this video so you can follow along,
step by step, just go and join my eMail group, or my Newsletter group, and you'll get access
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Right, have a good one and I'll catch you next time.