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Module 6 • Lesson 2⚙️ Advanced Actions & Conditionals

If you have done a task twice, Photoshop can do it a thousand times. Actions record your exact steps; conditionals let one Action branch on what it finds; batches run it over a folder; droplets turn it into a file you drag images onto. This is where hours become seconds.

📚 What You'll Learn

By the end of this lesson, you will be able to:

  • Record a clean, reusable Action and re-order or re-record steps
  • Insert stops, menu items, and modal pauses for input
  • Add a Conditional so one Action handles landscape and portrait differently
  • Batch an Action across a folder and save out automatically
  • Build a droplet — a drag-and-drop executable for your workflow

⏱️ Estimated Time: 50 minutes

🎯 Project: A single Action that resizes, sharpens, watermarks, and exports — branching by orientation — then batched across a whole folder.

In This Lesson

👤 The Goal: Do It Once, Run It Forever

The same 200 images to prep for the web. On the right, by hand: open, resize, sharpen, watermark, save, close — repeat until your afternoon is gone. On the left, one Action batched over the folder does all 200 while you get coffee. Drag the handle:

Batched By hand
A diagram of the principle. The setup cost of recording an Action is paid back the second time you run it — and every time after is free.

🧠 Mental Model: Record, Branch, Batch

An Action is a recorded macro: you hit record, perform your steps once, and Photoshop stores them as a replayable list. A Conditional is an if inside that list — "if the document is landscape, play the Landscape action; otherwise the Portrait one" — so one Action copes with mixed input. A Batch points an Action at a folder and runs it on every file; a droplet saves that batch as an icon you drop files onto.

Two rules make Actions reliable. Record with the right units and relative moves (percentages, not fixed pixels tied to one image size), and remember that Actions capture what you did, not what you meant — so record on a representative file and test on odd ones.

Record if landscape?conditional → wide crop → tall crop Batch ▶
Figure 1: Record once, branch with a conditional, then batch the whole thing. One Action, mixed input, no supervision.

🎬 The Actions Panel

Open Window ▸ Actions. Group related Actions into a set, hit the record button, and every eligible step you take is logged. You can drag steps to re-order, double-click a step to re-record its values, toggle a step off, or add a modal (the dialog icon) so the Action pauses for you to confirm settings on each run.

Actions
📁 Delivery set ▾ Web Delivery ✓ Image Size — 2000 px long edge ✓ Unsharp Mask — 80% / 1.0 / 0 ▣ Conditional — if Landscape… ✓ Place — watermark.png ✓ Save As — JPG (quality 10) record · play · stop
Figure 2: A recorded delivery Action. Checkmarks mean the step runs; the dialog toggle (▣) makes a step pause for input. Re-record any step by double-clicking it.

⚠️ Record relative, not absolute

An Action that crops to "1080×1080 from position 340,120" breaks on a differently sized image. Use Image Size by long-edge, percentage crops, and content-relative selections so the Action survives varied input. Test it on your weirdest file before trusting a batch.

🔀 Conditionals & Batch

From the Actions panel menu, Insert Conditional… lets a step ask a question — is the document landscape, square, portrait; is it a certain size; is a layer present — and play one Action if true and another if false. Chain a couple and one Action gracefully handles a mixed folder.

To run it, File ▸ Automate ▸ Batch: choose the Action, a source folder (or "Import"), a destination, and file-naming rules. Tick Override Action "Save As" commands so files land where you say. For a reusable icon, File ▸ Automate ▸ Create Droplet writes a small app; drop any images or folders onto it and the batch runs.

✅ Suppress dialogs for a hands-off run

In Batch, set errors to "Log errors to file" and leave dialog toggles off so nothing stops the run halfway. A true batch should complete 500 files without asking you a single question — that is the whole point.

🛠️ Guided Build: A Delivery Action

Gather a folder of mixed landscape and portrait images to prep for the web.

Step 1: Record the core · 10 min

  1. Window ▸ Actions ▸ new set "Delivery", new action "Web Delivery", Record.
  2. Image Size to 2000px long edge, Unsharp Mask, Place your watermark PNG, Save As JPG. Stop recording.

Step 2: Add the branch · 10 min

  1. Record two tiny helper actions: "Crop Wide" and "Crop Tall".
  2. In Web Delivery, panel menu ▸ Insert Conditional: if Document is Landscape play Crop Wide, else Crop Tall.

Step 3: Batch it · 8 min

  1. File ▸ Automate ▸ Batch: Action = Web Delivery, Source = your folder, Destination = an output folder, tick Override Save As, set naming.
  2. Run. Watch the whole folder process untouched, landscape and portrait each cropped correctly.

Step 4: Make a droplet · 6 min

  1. File ▸ Automate ▸ Create Droplet, point it at Web Delivery, save the droplet to your desktop.
  2. Drag a folder of new images onto it. Instant delivery set, no Photoshop menus. 🏆

✅ Project Completion Checklist

  • ☐ A recorded, relative (long-edge/percentage) delivery Action
  • ☐ A conditional branching landscape vs portrait
  • ☐ A batch that runs the folder hands-off with Override Save As
  • ☐ Errors logged, no mid-run dialogs
  • ☐ A working droplet on the desktop

🧗 Now You: Solo Variation

🌟 Your challenge

  1. Record an Action that outputs three sizes of each image (thumb, web, print) into three subfolders in one run.
  2. Add a conditional that skips already-watermarked files (test for a layer) so re-running the batch is safe.
  3. Build a droplet a non-Photoshop colleague could use, with a Stop step that explains what to do if something looks wrong.

Going further: Actions can't loop or read a spreadsheet — when you hit that wall, the next lesson's variables and scripting take over. Note down the tasks Actions couldn't handle.

🍳 Recipe Card: Actions & Batch

Record once, run forever

  1. Window ▸ Actions → new set + action → Record relative steps
  2. Insert Conditional to branch (landscape / portrait / size)
  3. Insert stops / modals only where human input is truly needed
  4. File ▸ Automate ▸ Batch over a folder, Override Save As, log errors
  5. Create Droplet for a drag-and-drop reusable

Mantra: if you'll do it twice, record it once.

📓 Learning Journal

Add to your journal after this lesson:

  • Key concepts you learned
  • Techniques that clicked for you
  • Questions or confusion points to revisit
  • Ideas you want to try
  • Your progress and feelings about learning this

✍️ This lesson's prompt: List three repetitive tasks in your own workflow. For each, could an Action do it, or do you need a conditional or a script? Sorting them is the start of automating your practice.

🔭 Where This Leads

Actions replay fixed steps; they can't read data or loop with logic. When the job is "make 300 badges from a spreadsheet," you need Lesson 6.3 — Data-Driven Graphics & a Scripting Intro, the Module 6 deliverable, where variables and a little JavaScript take automation the last mile.

My Action works on one image but breaks in the batch. Why?

Almost always an absolute value — a fixed crop, a hard-coded size, a named layer that doesn't exist in every file. Re-record those steps as relative, and add conditionals to skip files that don't match the assumptions.

Actions vs droplets vs scripts — when each?

Action for repeatable steps; droplet to hand that Action to someone or a folder-watch; script when you need loops, math, external data, or decisions Actions can't express. They stack: scripts can even call Actions.