avoid overwriting when saving/exporting from an action

Forum|Forum|7 years ago
May 20, 2018
3 replies
2855 views

I have an action that saves a backup of my exported images into a folder (so I have one folder that contains every single photo I export).

Nearly all my photos have unique names, but I've just realised that my drone photos - which currently do not - are overwriting themselves.

Is there a way to get the action to not do this? ie to add a number just like exporting from lightroom does to avoid overwriting?

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JJMack

Community Expert

If you use Photoshop script Image Processor to backup your images instead of your action. It would add a File name serial suffix not overlay existing file images in your backup folders.

JJMack

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gethoAuthor

Inspiring

rather than spending a day getting my head round scripting, I just amended my lightroom output name preset to include DDMMYY. Making it vanishingly unlikely that ii'll ever have 2 identical files. Just like me: its not pretty, but it's functional

Trevor.Dennis

Community Expert

If you make Save As the last line in your Action, it will save to whichever folder you selected when you made the Action. i.e. as a new file not overwriting the original which would be in a different folder.

If you use Photoshop tools in your action that would prevent the file saving as a JPG, then make the penultimate line in your Action Flatten Image, The files will then save as JPGs. When you have completed your batch run, move the files from the 'Save As' folder to a permanent location to keep things tidy, and free up the Save As folder for the next batch run.

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gethoAuthor

Inspiring

I want to avoid extra steps in my workflow. The files are being saved as I said in the OP, to one folder which contains everything. That's how I want it. The files are also saved to folders which get moved to the project folder for that job, and to a dropbox. Yes I could just copy and paste the files into one final backup folder, but If I was organised enough to do remember to do that every time, I wouldn't have tried to automate it, or be posting this