Module 6 • Lesson 3🔁 Pipelines — Headless Batch, APIs & QA

👤 The Goal: Output Without a Human

Two ways to make ten thousand assets. On the right, a person opens, edits, checks, and exports each — a job measured in weeks and mistakes. On the left, an automated pipeline ingests a queue, processes via the API, runs a QA gate, and delivers only the passes — measured in hours and unattended. Drag the handle:

🧠 Mental Model: The Assembly Line

A pipeline is an assembly line with a quality inspector. Assets enter a queue (ingest); each is transformed by a script, action, or API call (process); a QA gate checks it against spec and routes passes forward and fails to a review pile; passes are packaged and shipped (deliver). The whole thing runs unattended, logs everything, and retries transient failures. Your craft knowledge lives in the process step; your professionalism lives in the QA gate.

The mindset shift from a batch (Intermediate Module 6) is autonomy plus verification. A batch runs your steps; a pipeline runs them at scale, checks its own work, and is honest about what failed. Silent success on a broken file is worse than a loud failure — the gate exists to make failure loud.

🌐 Headless & the Photoshop API

The desktop app needs a screen and a person; a pipeline needs neither. Adobe's Photoshop API (part of Firefly Services) runs Photoshop operations server-side over HTTP — you POST a job describing inputs, an action or edit, and an output target, and it returns the rendered result. It even runs your recorded Actions (.atn) and PSD template edits (smart-object and text replacement — the data-driven idea from Intermediate Module 6, at cloud scale).

// process step — call the Photoshop API (pseudo-Node)
const res = await fetch("https://image.adobe.io/pie/psdService/documentOperations", {
  method: "POST",
  headers: { Authorization: `Bearer ${token}`, "x-api-key": KEY,
             "Content-Type": "application/json" },
  body: JSON.stringify({
    inputs:  [{ href: srcUrl, storage: "external" }],
    options: { actions: [{ href: actionUrl, actionName: "Web Delivery" }] },
    outputs: [{ href: dstUrl, storage: "external", type: "image/jpeg", quality: 8 }]
  })
});
const { jobId } = await res.json();   // poll jobId until status === "succeeded"

✔️ The QA Gate

The gate is a function that returns pass or fail with a reason. It encodes the spec you'd otherwise check by eye: correct dimensions and aspect, right color mode and profile, resolution in range, total ink under limit (Module 5), file size sane, and no empty/blank output. Passes flow on; fails are logged with the reason for a human. Here's the shape of it:

// qa-gate.js — returns { ok, reasons[] }
function qaCheck(meta) {
  const reasons = [];
  if (meta.width !== 2000)                 reasons.push("width != 2000");
  if (meta.colorMode !== "RGB")            reasons.push("not RGB (expected sRGB delivery)");
  if (meta.dpi < 72)                       reasons.push("resolution too low");
  if (meta.bytes > 5 * 1024 * 1024)        reasons.push("file over 5 MB");
  if (meta.maxInk && meta.maxInk > 300)    reasons.push("total ink over 300%");
  if (meta.isBlank)                        reasons.push("output appears blank");
  return { ok: reasons.length === 0, reasons };
}

for (const asset of processed) {
  const result = qaCheck(asset.meta);
  if (result.ok) deliver(asset);
  else           log.fail(asset.id, result.reasons);   // loud, not silent
}

🛠️ Guided Build: Design a Pipeline

You'll design the flow and implement the one piece that makes it trustworthy — the QA gate.

🧗 Now You: Solo Variation

🍳 Recipe Card: Pipeline

📓 Learning Journal

📝 Module 6 Summary

🎉 What You've Accomplished — Across All of Module 6

You've crossed from operating Photoshop to programming it: scripting decisions, shipping tools with a UI, and building self-checking pipelines that produce at scale. This is the highest-leverage skill in the whole course — it multiplies every other skill you have across thousands of assets, unattended.

❓ Common Questions at This Stage

🔭 Looking Ahead

You can automate the deterministic. Next you handle the probabilistic, professionally: Module 7 — AI Mastery & Provenance uses generative tools at a controlled, rights-clean, disclosed standard.

✅ Before the Next Module

• Ship one script and one panel button that do real work.
• Write and test a QA-gate function for a deliverable you make.
• Write your Learning Journal entry.

📚 Additional Resources

• Adobe: Photoshop UXP scripting
• Adobe: Photoshop API (Firefly Services)