Technical writers tend to illustrate their documents thoroughly to give their readers perspective on the task at hand. This also engages the visual learners in the group.
Best practice dictates that image elements be templated and defined in a style guide as text elements are. Readers are better served by the consistent presentation of graphics and text. Where writers work in teams, consistent practice makes document development, editing, and approval quicker and easier.
For images, common standards for image resolution, size, and border are recommended. Where images are annotated, standards for the use of lines, arrows, and explanatory text should be defined and published in a style guide.
Adobe PhotoShop is a powerful raster image processing program used by many technical writers to process their images. PhotoShop includes an Automation tool set to speed repetitive image processing tasks and to ensure image processing standards are consistently met.
For instance, by recording Actions and running them in Batch mode, a writer can automate the setting of image resolution, size, and colour mode. In addition, image borders can be set and saved in the image file. In Batch mode, image processing Actions can be applied to every image in a folder quickly without intervention.
To make distribution of these Actions easy, PhotoShop automation includes Droplets: a method of publishing PhotoShop batch automation in executable format that will work for anyone with PhotoShop, regardless of whether they are running Windows or Mac.
NOTE: To enable Droplets on other computers, the PhotoShop action set that the Droplet refers to must be loaded. To load an action set, press the Actions palette menu button  and select Load Actions… from the list. Using the Load Actions dialog, locate and select the required action set (.atn) and press the Load button.
The Droplet can be saved anywhere on the writer’s machine. To activate the Droplet, drag and drop an image file or a folder of image files onto the Droplet. The Droplet opens PhotoShop (if it isn’t open already) and runs the Actions on all image files received. This serves to enforce image processing standards and allows users anywhere to achieve the required results regardless of their familiarity with PhotoShop.
To illustrate, let’s create a series of Actions and a Droplet to run these Actions on a folder of images.
To create the Actions, activate the Actions Tab on the History/Actions/Tool Presets Window. If this window is not displayed in your workspace by default, go to the Window menu and check the Actions item.
Window Menu showing Actions Tab item
Actions Tab on History/Actions/Tool Presets window (see toolbar at bottom)
Press the Create New Set button  on the toolbar at the bottom of the window (fourth from left), if you wish to create your own Actions set. Otherwise, your Actions will be saved into the Default Actions set.
Name the new action set as you wish and press OK.
New Set Dialog
Press the Create New Action button  on the toolbar at the bottom of the window (fifth from left).
Name the new Action as you wish and press OK. You may also associate the Action with a Function Key, if you wish.
New Action Dialog
To record your Actions, press the Record button on the New Action dialog. For the purposes of this article, let’s record the following actions:
- Open an image file
- Resize the image
- Change the colour mode to grayscale
- Add a black 2-pixel border around the image
- Save the image
- Close the image
While the macro recorder is activated, follow this procedure:
- Click through File > Open… Navigate to an image file and open it.
- Click through Image > Image Size… Change the width to 4.5 inches.
- Click through Image > Mode > Grayscale. Discard the colour information.
- Click through Select > All.
- Click through Edit > Stroke… Set the stroke to 2 pixels, the colour to black, and the stroke inside.
- Click through Select > Deselect.
- Click through File > Save As… Rename the image and select the format settings.
- Close the image file by clicking the X in the upper right corner.
When you are finished recording these Actions, press the Stop Recording button  .
Stop Playing/Recording button (first button on left)
Now that your Actions are saved, you can create a Droplet to run these Actions on a folder of image files, a Droplet that can be distributed to your coworkers so they can perform the same actions easily, perhaps without understanding the process or the software.
NOTE: To enable Droplets on other computers, the PhotoShop action set that the Droplet refers to must be loaded. To load an action set, press the Actions palette menu button and select Load Actions… from the list. Using the Load Actions dialog, locate and select the required action set (.atn) and press the Load button.
To create a Droplet, follow this procedure:
1. Click through File > Automate > Create Droplet…
File Menu showing the Automate and Create Droplet… items
Create Droplet Dialog
2. Press the Choose… button to name and to set the save location of the Droplet.
3. Attach the Droplet to the appropriate Action Set and Actions.
4. Check the Override Action “Open” Commands to allow the Droplet to open every file in the folder.
5. Check the Suppress Color Profile Warnings to suppress the warnings that will pop up when your Actions convert the images to grayscale.
6. Set the Destination to Folder and Choose… the destination folder.
7. Check the Override Action “Save As” Commands to allow the Droplet to save every file in the folder.
8. Set your File Naming settings as you wish. For example, I used a file type identifier (IMG for image) and a space, the save date in the format yymmdd, a space, the Document Name, and the file extension.
9. Finally, set the Errors to log to a TXT file and set the Save As… conditions for the filename and location you prefer. This allows the Droplet to work through errors, but report them should you wish to know why some images weren’t processed.
Create Droplet Dialog filled out as described above
Pressing OK, creates the Droplet in the name you set and in the location you identified. For instance, in my example, the following appeared on my Desktop.
Droplet Icon
To use the Droplet automation, drag and drop an image folder onto the Droplet.
NOTE: If you send your processed images to a destination folder, such as I do in the example, you will need to ensure that the folder is available when the Droplet automation runs.
If you want to distribute your Droplet to others, simply send the Droplet and action set (.atn) by e-mail (perhaps in a zip folder to get it through your company’s network security). In the body of the e-mail, include the requirements of loading the required action set and creating a destination folder (if you used one), and simple instructions concerning how to load the action set and send images to the Droplet for processing.
That’s all there is to it. You should have much more free time ahead of you now.
As you work with Droplets more, you may create a few different Droplets to meet your various graphic needs, maybe one for print publications, one for presentations, one for online publications, and one for CD slideshows.
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