Saving JPEGs & Saving Watermarked/Web Images Question

[Tina R.]

Hi Damien! I did try searching through the tutorials you've written as well as the boards, so I'm hoping that maybe you can help me here. I have GOT to speed up my workflow here and am wondering if I am going about this in a really roundabout kind of way and if there is a faster way, and if so...what would you suggest.

I am selling digital files to a client - full resolution files, as well as the web-sized watermarked files for social media.

So say I have an image, and I finished my edits in PS. This is what I've been doing to save for both files: flatten image, crop to the 11x15, unsharp mask, save as jpeg. Then Edit-step backward (to undo the unsharp mask), resize to the 2048 for FB long edge, watermark, unsharp mask, then save again for the social media files. This is taking a LONG LONG time to do each of these steps and constantly be stepping backwards because of the unsharp mask. I feel like there has to be a faster way! And then if that image is also converted into b&W...even more steps. I saw your file on batch saving, and I did that for the initial jpegs, but I'm not even sure how to quicken up the next steps. What I'm thinking is that I will still go to edit-step backwards, and just create an action that does the resize, watermark, AND unsharp mask in one swoop (can the 'step-backwards' be put in there also, I wonder?). And if I DO that...is there a way to 'batch' that same action to all of the images and not have to go through one at a time to do it?

I'm sorry if this sounds confusing, it's confusing in my own mind!! I'm still kind of learning my way through PS and how to get more efficient in it once I pull my images into it.

Thank you for any and all feedback/guidance you can give me!!

[Damien Symonds]

Why do you feel the need to step backwards?  I'd leave the initial sharpening, do the resize to 2048, then if more sharpening is needed for web, apply it.

[Damien Symonds]

Is this the one you watched?  http://www.damiensymonds.net/client-photoshop

[Tina R.]

I guess I thought the unsharp mask was supposed to be the very last thing you do before you save, but if I can leave it, all the better! Yes, that's the one I watched, it was very helpful. I created an action to do the other things, and that sped it up a bit, and then batch saved again for the web-sized ones, but it didn't give me an option to change the name or somehow 'mark' them as web-sized so that they wouldn't be lumped together in the same folder as the full-res. Is there a way to do this that I'm just missing? Image processor is a bit new to me also.

[Damien Symonds]

Is this what you set up?  http://www.damiensymonds.net/act_web.html

[Tina R.]

I do have that set up but for whatever reason, that I can't remember when I set it up, I ended up doing something else that I *thought* was easier at the time. Don't ask me what it was, I honestly can't remember! But I'm going to go back to that link and read about it again. Thank you much!