One feature in Adobe Lightroom that took a while for me to find and utilise was the ability to run Photoshop actions at the end of the export process. Quite often there are some Photoshop steps that I need to run on my photographs after I've processed them from RAW and completing these manually can take a lot of time. Within Photoshop there are actions which we can create to repeat tasks quickly and easily and I wanted to use some of these within Lightroom as well.

The solution is to create some Droplets from your actions which you can then assign from Lightroom. Droplets are simply a way of saving an action into a format that Lightroom can execute. By encorporating droplets and actions into your workflow you can save large amounts of time, freeing you up to take more photographs!

How to Create a Droplet

Creating a droplet is quick and easy. Firstly you will need to record the action which you wish to use as a droplet.

With that complete you can save it as a droplet from the File > Automate > Create Droplet menu.

This will open a dialog of options for the droplet. Firstly you need to choose a location and filename for the droplet in the "Save Droplet In" section. I tend to save mine to a subdirectory under My Documents as they are then included in my backup routine.

You can configure the save options here as well, although for JPEGs I find it easiest to record a Save As step in my action which allows me to configure the save options more precisely. If you have included a Save As step in your action you will need to select the "Save and Close" option from the Destination area and then tick the "Override Action "Save As" Commands" option. Otherwise you will need to specify the output directory and filename configuration for your droplet.

Using the Droplet in Lightroom

Before you can use a droplet in Lightroom you need to add it or a shortcut to it to the "Export Actions" folder in the Lightroom directory. This is located at C:\Documents and Settings\User Name\Application Data\Adobe\Lightroom by default. If you are unsure of where you droplet folder is located you can find it by opening the Export dialog. At the bottom you will see an "After Export" dropdown. Click 'Go to Export Actions Folder' which will open a Windows Explorer window pointing the Lightroom directory.

Once you've copied the droplet it should be available in the "Export" dialog within Lightroom. Configure the export settings as required and at the bottom there is a "Post Processing" section with an "After Export" dropdown. Your droplet should appear in this dropdown which you can then select.

When you click Export the file will processed by Lightroom before launching Photoshop to run the droplet action steps.