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description: "Photoshop Automation (Actions & Batch Processing) — Repeating the same sequence of edits across dozens or hundreds of photos by hand is slow and…"---

07 · Photoshop Automation (Actions & Batch Processing)

Repeating the same sequence of edits across dozens or hundreds of photos by hand is slow and error-prone. This module covers recording an Action — a saved, replayable sequence of Photoshop steps — and running it unattended across a whole folder with Batch or the Image Processor.

1. Recording an Action

  1. Open Window > Actions (Option/Alt+F9). Click the Create New Action icon at the bottom of the panel, name it something descriptive (e.g. Web Export — Resize + Watermark), and click Record — the panel's record button (a red circle) turns solid red, meaning every subsequent step is now being captured.
  2. With a sample file already open, perform the edits you want repeated — for example: Image > Image Size to resize, File > Place Embedded to drop in a logo watermark at a consistent position, then File > Export > Export As to save the result. Each step appears as its own line in the Actions panel as you go.
  3. Click the Stop Playing/Recording icon (a square) when finished. The Action now appears fully expanded in the panel, listing every recorded step in order.
  4. To insert a manual pause — useful for a step that needs different input per file, like repositioning a crop — select a step, open the panel menu (top-right ≡), and choose Insert Stop...; add a short message describing what to do, and check Allow Continue so playback can resume after the pause instead of halting the batch entirely.
  5. Double-click any recorded step's name to reopen its exact settings and edit them without re-recording from scratch; drag a step up/down in the list to reorder it, or drag it to the trash icon to delete just that step.

Don't record File > Open inside an action meant for Batch

If you plan to run the action via Batch (Section 2), avoid recording your own File > Open step at the start — Batch opens each source file automatically and feeds it through the action. An extra Open step recorded into the action itself is redundant and can open the wrong file when the action runs unattended. A File > Place Embedded step for a fixed asset (like a watermark logo) is unrelated to this and is fine to include.

2. Playing back an Action

  1. Select the Action (or a specific step within it, to start partway through) in the Actions panel and click the Play icon (a right- pointing triangle) at the bottom of the panel to run it once on the currently open file.
  2. Group related actions into an Action Set (the folder-style Create New Set icon) to keep the panel organized once you have several — one set for web export variants, another for print prep, for example.
  3. Actions can be saved to disk (panel menu > Save Actions...) as a portable .atn file and loaded on another machine (panel menu > Load Actions...) — useful for sharing a studio's standard export action with a collaborator.

3. Batch processing

File > Automate > Batch runs one Action across every file in a folder automatically, without opening and closing each one by hand.

  1. Choose File > Automate > Batch.... Under Play, pick the Set and Action to run.
  2. Under Source, choose Folder and click Choose... to point at the folder of files to process. Check Override Action "Open" Commands only if your action does contain its own Open step you want Batch to ignore in favor of opening each source file directly.
  3. Under Destination, choose Folder and pick where processed files should save, rather than None (which just leaves files open, unsaved) or Save and Close (which overwrites the originals in place — a safer choice than overwriting your only copies of the source files is almost always a separate destination folder).
  4. Check Override Action "Save As" Commands so each file saves into this destination folder rather than wherever the recorded action's Save/Export step originally pointed.
  5. Under File Naming, optionally set a naming pattern (e.g. appending -web before the extension) if you want processed files distinguishable from originals at a glance.
  6. Click OK — Photoshop opens, processes, and saves each file in the source folder in turn, with no further input needed unless the action contains an Insert Stop (Section 1).

4. Image Processor

For simpler jobs — just resizing and/or converting file format across a folder, without a custom sequence of edits — File > Scripts > Image Processor is faster to set up than recording an Action first.

  1. Choose File > Scripts > Image Processor.... Pick the source folder (or use currently open files) and a destination folder for the output.
  2. Check one or more file types to save as (JPEG, PSD, TIFF), each with its own Resize to Fit width/height and quality/compression settings.
  3. Optionally check Run Action and pick a saved Action to apply to every file in addition to the resize/format conversion — combining a custom Action with the Image Processor's batch resize/export step in one pass.
  4. Click Run — progress displays in a small status window, and the dialog reports how many files completed when finished.

5. Worked example: batch resize, watermark, and export

  1. Open one sample photo. Record a new Action: Image > Image Size to a target width (e.g. 2000px, with Resample on), File > Place Embedded to add a logo watermark positioned in a corner, Layer > Flatten Image, then File > Export > Export As as a JPEG. Stop recording.
  2. Run File > Automate > Batch, selecting this Action, with Source: Folder pointed at a folder of raw photos and Destination: Folder pointed at a new, empty output folder, with Override "Save As" Commands checked.
  3. Confirm every file in the output folder is resized, watermarked identically, and named as expected.

Cheat sheet

Action Where
Actions panel Window > Actions (Option/Alt+F9)
New Action / Record / Stop Actions panel icons (folder+ / red circle / square)
Insert a manual pause in an action Panel menu > Insert Stop...
Save/Load actions as a file Panel menu > Save Actions... / Load Actions...
Run an action across a folder File > Automate > Batch
Quick resize + format conversion across a folder File > Scripts > Image Processor
Make a droplet (drag-and-drop mini app for one action) File > Automate > Create Droplet

How It Actually Works

  • An Action is a recorded, serialized list of menu-command invocations with their exact dialog parameters, not a screen-recording of your clicks. Every step Photoshop captures while recording stores the specific command (e.g. Image Size) plus the parameter values you confirmed in its dialog (target width, resample method, etc.) as structured data, not pixel coordinates or timing. That's precisely why Actions replay reliably at any window size or document dimension — each step re-invokes the same underlying command with the same stored parameters against whatever file is currently open, rather than "clicking in the same screen location" the way a naive macro recorder would.
  • Relative values (like "resize to 2000px wide") are stored as absolute numbers unless you deliberately record a percentage-based step, which is why an Action recorded on a 4000px-wide sample photo and then run on a 1200px-wide source file will upscale that smaller file to 2000px rather than skip it — the Action has no concept of "only if larger than," it just replays the literal numeric command it captured.
  • Batch feeds files through the Action by substituting the currently-open document for every step's implicit target, one file at a time in a loop. Photoshop opens file 1, runs the entire recorded step sequence against it, saves/exports per the Destination settings, closes it, then repeats for file 2 — this per-file, single-threaded loop is why Batch jobs scale linearly with file count and why a slow step (a large filter, a big resize) multiplies directly across the whole folder's runtime with no shortcut.
  • Insert Stop pauses the loop, not just the current step — Batch has to actually block and wait for a human response before it can proceed to the next command in the sequence for that file. This is a real, synchronous halt in the automation pipeline, which is exactly why an Action full of Stops defeats the point of Batch processing dozens of files unattended — each Stop reintroduces a manual checkpoint the whole batch run has to sit through, file by file.
  • The Image Processor is a bundled script wrapping the same underlying resize/export/Action-invocation APIs Batch itself uses, exposed through a simpler single-purpose dialog — which is why it can optionally "Run Action" as one more step in its own pipeline: under the hood it is scripting the identical resize-then-save-then-optionally-run-a-recorded- action sequence Batch performs, just pre-built for the common resize-and-convert-format case so you don't have to record that specific Action yourself.

Exercise

Record an Action that resizes a photo to a fixed width, places a watermark logo in a corner, flattens, and exports as a JPEG. Run it across a folder of at least three sample photos using File > Automate > Batch, saving results to a separate destination folder with a distinguishing filename suffix. Confirm all output files are resized and watermarked consistently.