Droplets in Photoshop CS5
Wednesday, May 5, 2010 at 11:41 
Every photo I upload to Flickr goes through a watermarking process. To do this, I created a watermarking action within Photoshop (started this in the CS3 days). These actions can be 'converted' to so-called droplets. These are 'shortcuts' you can place on e.g. your desktop. Every image you drag onto this droplet gets opened in Photoshop and the preconfigured actions are applied.
This worked in Photoshop CS3, and CS4 (after some modifications to the original action). But in Photoshop CS5 the droplets won't execute. The action itself runs smoothly within Photoshop, but when you export it as a droplet, the action won't start. You have to start the action manually.....
I even tried to create an action / droplet from scratch in Photoshop CS5, but that one won't run either when I drop a JPEG on the droplet. This is a reason for not upgrading to CS5 on my main machine (which also still runs Leopard for compatibility reasons).
According to the online Adobe Photoshop CS5 helpfiles regarding droplets, the droplets should still function. So I write this of as a bug in the initial release of Photoshop CS5.
Willem
I posted a bug report @ Adobe after I found out that I'm not the only one having issues with this.
Willem
The discussion on the Adobe Forums have attracted the attention of Adobe employees. So hopefully, we'll see a bugfix soon. I don't want to modify every action I have a droplet for. Especially since I use several actions made by others, which I 'converted' into droplets.
Willem
Adobe released an update for Photoshop CS5 (v12.0.1), which fixes the droplet problem in the 32bit mode (I haven't tried the 64bit mode yet). Just launch the Adobe updater and the update will be installed.
And now; continue to evaluate the new features of Adobe CS5, and hope I don't run into more annoying bugs.
Reader Comments (16)
I've had the same problem. Very annoying
Did you also 'upgrade' from CS4 to CS5 by removing CS4 first or was it a clean install?
I too have this problem! I just filed a bug report as well (thanks for the link). I hope Adobe fixes this real soon as it is quite annoying.
Note: this was an upgrade to CS5 from CS4 on a Mac running OS X 10.6.3
did anyone fix that droplet problem?
upgrade to cs5 / running on 10.6.3
thx,
ralf
Same here. I tried to run an existing CS4 droplet and got a message telling me PS CS5 wouldn't support droplets when running in 64-bit. So I switched it to 32-bit, still failed. Created a droplet from scratch, still failed. Just opens the source image and sits there like a lemon. When I click Play on the requested action it works fine. Clearly a bug, but how did they not spot it after going to the trouble of writing an alert acknowledging the 64-bit incompatibility? Hope it's easy to fix...
In another thread I learned that the problem actually lies in the use of a different "destination" for the files. If you stick to "save and close" or "none", droplets will work. So there's definitely a bug wrt. droplets in CS5.
Note: 32bit vs 64bit makes no difference; with above taken into account the droplets will work in both environments.
Now waiting for Adobe to fix this…
@ the adobe forum:
http://forums.adobe.com/thread/635580?tstart=1#
still waiting for a fix from adobe.......
Hello,
Have you tried use the droplet without PS opened? My droplets only woks with 32bit cs5. So when I got the 64bt version opened the droplet will fail. But when I use the droplet with no PS open, the droplet opens the 32bit version and executes the actions without any problems.
You also have to run PS as an Administrator.
This works for me in Windows 7.
Hi Stoffe,
this problem seems to exist on the Apple OSX platform only.
The 32 versus 64bit part you're mentioning could have something to do with compatibility issues.
I personally think that Adobe forgot to properly 'upgrade' the droplet functionality in CS5 to support 64bit actions (in your case). This shows as always; never go production on a v1.0 edition of any software. And yes, in my opinion, the (vanilla) release of CS5 in April 2010 is a v1.0.
I ran into this as well today. Just installed a new harddrive with fresh install of cs5. brought over my previous actions/droplets. after dropping images onto droplet, the image would open in photoshop and just sit there. It would run if i hit play on the particular action.
quite annoying.
I find it totally insufficient for Adobe to have shipped or release a trial of APS CS5 with Droplets
Not working in 64bit full stop!
Not working in 32bit at least when they are supposed to!
I have worked out a work around, just use your actions under Automate as Batch,
this at least works and you don't have to switch down to 32bit,
but it does slow you down a touch as you must manually set up source and destination for each batch you do.
I am also disappointed that contact sheets are not supported in 64bit and is just an optional 32bit plugin/preset.
As a photographer amongst other titles; batching mass amounts of images, say adding keylines, downing to 72dpi, etc is important to droplet batch for my workflow's; as is creating quick contact sheets so that clients can choose their picks.
As soon as the trial of APS CS5 is over I am going back to CS4 until this is all resolved, (Adobe miss-out for a site licence CS5 renewal, can't teach 180 students about workflow when droplets don't work) though the speed may not be as good as CS5; the CS4 workflow speed makes up for it, in the end they end up balancing out at around the same speed!.. This is just not good enough! Even if the droplet issue is resolved to work in 32bit, what the hell am I supposed to do with my 64bit plugs and dropleting them? They refuse to work in 32bit! I see re-install the 32bit ones for when I need to droplet, and then re-reinstall 64bit ones' when I need 64bit grunt to chop through the large files..
Scratching my head!!!
&
Disappointed!
Sounds very Microsofty - Adobe, Get the product out on sale and then fix the problems when enough people complain....!
Try downloading the update, droplets seem to be fixed now!
thanks Adobe!!!
does it works on 64 bit now?
Not working here..
Hi Michael,
after installing the first real update on Photoshop CS5 the droplet thing worked for me on both the 32 and 64bit versions of Photoshop CS5 on my Mac. No idea if this (still) is an issue on the Windows platform.
Poking around the internet it appears that droplets are not supported in x64 on 10.5 due to a deprecated API that Apple will not be fixing
I am on Win7 and CS5 12.0.4 and droplets only work if rewritten anew every time on my desktop and not at all on laptop. I have tried all combinations of "run as administrator". So droplet issues were not sorted in 12.0.1 or if they were something else has changed since to spoil the fix. A pity since I was learning a new workflow which depends on droplets. Hate paying for things that do not work.