Droplet question

[kiska]

I created a droplet in cs2. Have installed cs5. Loaded the actions necessary for the droplet into cs5...but the droplet won't work; the actions do. I'm on a macPro, 10.5.8. Thanks

[John Wheeler]

Hi kiska

If you have not done so already (not clear from your post), once the action is verified to totally work from within Photoshop, just recreate the droplet from within CS5 and your present OS. Here is the link to the CS5 help file on droplets. http://help.adobe.com/en_US/photoshop/cs/using/WSfd1234e1c4b69f30ea53e41001031ab64-7420a.html

If you have already done this or you still end up with issues, please provide a more detail explanation of the steps your are taking and what you mean that "..but the droplet won't work." Is there any message, does it refuse dropping a file on the droplet, you see no expected dialogs, Photoshop freezes etc. This may help forum members better help you debug the problem with you. Hope this helps.

[Chain]

You do not need any actions in Photoshop for a droplet to work. The action is embedded in the droplet!

A droplet created in an older version of Photoshop sometimes won't work in a newer version (like yours). You must then recreate the droplet.

[John Wheeler]

Just for clarity Chain

My assumption was as well that the droplet was broken. So once the actions are in PX CS5 and tested out to work, then the droplet is re-created (which requires the Actions if place{?}), then you can delete the actions from CS5 (if you don't want to run them directly in CS5) and the droplet will continue to work. Is that correct?

[Chain]

Correct, you only need the action to create the droplet. Then the action can be deleted and the droplet will still work. You can even copy a droplet to another machine, or place it on a server to be shared by several users; no problem.

But do save a copy of the action somewhere because you might need to recreate the droplet in the future - like Kiska experienced.

If you have lost the action and need to recreate the action from the droplet it gets complicaated and you will have to use 3rd party tools. By searching I found this page that seems to have a bunch of awesome scripts - including one that can convert a droplet back into an action!
http://ps-scripts.sourceforge.net/xtools.html

[John Wheeler]

Thanks Chain

I figured those were the steps yet have not created a droplet myself so your info is very helpful.

Also, thanks for the extra advice on keeping the actions and also the reverse process back from a droplet.

[John Wheeler]

While we are at it, I spotted some info about droplets on Macs that may be useful (even if not your problem).

1) If you were running on a PPC mac and upgraded to an Intel Mac, droplets require the use of Rosetta to be able to run some PPC code that the droplets still use. If you do not have Rosetta running/enabled you would automatically have a problem with droplets created in any version of PS before 12.0.1

Some Photoshop droplets require Rosetta to run under Intel-only versions of the Mac OS, and some of these OS versions don't ship with Rosetta, which users must download.

2) if and when you upgrade to OSX Lion.

Here are just a few tidbits from the Adobe info and will post the link below that:

Additional information

• Droplets in Photoshop CS4 and earlier rely on code for PPC (Power PC) processors (used by Apple G4, G5 computers) to run.

• Droplets in the initial release of Photoshop CS5 also rely on code for PPC (Power PC) processors (used by Apple G4, G5 computers) to run.

• Apple no longer supports or includes Rosetta with Mac OS X 10.7, which is required to run PPC code on Macintosh computers with Intel processors.

http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/907/cpsid_90706.html

[kiska]

Thanks for your help guys.

[kiska]

TAH DAH! Simple fix. Install all ps5 updates. Simple.