A command was canceled or stopped while batching

So I was trying this great feature called "Actions" of Adobe Photoshop.

It worked fine when making the action and using it alone. While when I tried to use it for batch I got an error "A command was canceled or stopped while batching". And while the error window is there, you cannot do any adjustments to your canvas. If you do a "continue" or "stop", you can't achieve what you wanted to.

This happened because I had put a "stop" action in my set of actions so that I could make some adjustments particular to that image while it half of the job is done and still other half is left.

From my brief understanding of actions, it looked weird to me, as I should be able to stop a batch process and let it continue after I was done. If I can do it while working on a stand alone file, why not while working on a batch?

I tried searching on net, but no avail. Someone had suggested using two different action-sets for pre-stop and post-stop. That would have only increased the work, as I would need to store all psd files for all the images. While in my batch processing I was discarding psd at the end. Also, it looked like double work. Then I saw some more not so useful discussions in my hunt; e.g. dialogue box of save file etc.

Then I saw someone talking about a dialogue box of "insert a menu item" to be configurable. It gave me an idea for a work around.

So this was the solution for stopping batch processing to make some adjustments:
1) Add an action for inserting a text layer
2) In the text write some default text like "Hollow World" ;)
3) Then go to the actions menu and click on "insert menu item"
4) This will bring a window asking you to select some menu item
5) Select the "Free Transform" (This one is important, otherwise while executing, as soon as you click outside, the execution continues before you blink)

You are done.

Now when you run the batch script the execution will stop at the point when you wrote "hollow world". Now you can make desired adjustments to the text. When you click on "move tool" you are taken to the next step of actions which is "Free Transform" as per your actions. You can move around the text or delete if you want to, and when you are done, photoshop will continue execution to the next step.

It worked for me as I required "stop" for some text work (writing different title for different image). If you require different kind of adjustment to be made. You might want to add a different kind of menu item.


And most importantly: This was the work around I devised. It might be wrong or unnecessary. If someone knows correct method, please do let me know.