Photoshop: How to........

How to Create and Use an Action

Before starting
Plan your action carefully. Write down the stages you want to include and make sure you know exactly how to achieve them. You want your action to consist of a series of mouse clicks and/or keyboard shortcuts. You don't want any undo steps or corrections.

If you are including a 'save as jpeg' step in the action, perform the same 'save as jpeg' on an image before starting to record the action, choosing the quality level you want to include in the action. This is so that the required quality level appears in the panel during the action recording process. Changing the quality level during recording leads to problems when running the action later --the action is liable to stop at that point every time (which is a pain!)

If you are including a text layer (e.g. a copyright watermark) in the action, again perform this on an image beforehand, getting the font and size the way you want them beforehand. This means that the required font and size will appear automatically when you create the action.

Finally -- practice your action stages on an image. When you are happy knowing exactly what you want to do with the minimum necessary clicks/keystrokes, you're ready to begin.


Creating the action
Locate the actions palette. This may already be showing in the workspace, or it may be a tab in one of the panels that are showing. If you cannot see an actions palette at all, click on the 'Window' menu and check 'Actions'.

In the Actions palette click on the small icon in the top right corner (usually a downward pointing arrow with three small lines). A drop-down menu appears. Choose 'New Set' if you want to create your action in a set other than the Default Actions set. Alternatively, click on the New set button at the bottom of the actions palette. In the panel that appears, give the set a name and click OK. If you don't want to create a new set (it's not essential) skip this step and continue.

Open an image that you will use to record your action.

Bring down the actions menu as above, and choose New Action -- or click on the New action button at the bottom of the palette. In the panel that now appears, give the action a name that's going to mean something to you later, choose the set you want to save it in, and (if desired) choose a function key that will later apply the action to other images. Click OK and the recording process has now started -- notice that the record button at the bottom of the palette is now red.

Perform the stages of the action as you have rehearsed beforehand. Click nothing else in Photoshop while recording. Useful things to include in your action could be sharpening, watermarking (a multi-stage process that can easily be included), change image size, save as tif, save as jpeg, and Close. You can include as many steps in the action as you wish.

When saving and closing do not change the file name -- if you do, your action will save images to that file name every time it is used, resulting a single image that has been overwritten many times. The destination of the image when you save it is not important at this stage. You will have the option to change the destination each time you use the action.

When you have finished, click the stop button on the left at the bottom of the palette. The action is now recorded.

You can if you wish re-record the action, modifying stages as you do so. Highlight the action in the actions panel, bring down the actions menu and choose 'Record Again'. But it's best to get the action right in the first place -- hence the rehearsal. There are other things that you can do, but ignore them for the moment until you are more familiar with actions.


Running the action
You can run an action on a single image, several images that are already open in Photoshop or on a folder of images. For a single image all you need to do is to select the image, select the action in the action palette and then click the 'play' button at the bottom of the palette.

For batch processing the best option of all is in Bridge (CS2 onwards). Fromn here you can select images and then choose Tools> Photoshop> Batch, which brings up the batch processing panel in Photoshop and automatically applies the action that you choose to the selected images. The source (see next paragraph) is shown as 'Bridge'.

If you aren't using (or can't use) Bridge, in Photoshop choose File> Automate> Batch. In the batch processing panel choose the source (either open files or browse for the folder containing the images to be processed). Choose the action to be applied.

Next choose a destination. If you choose 'None' the files will remain open in Photoshop -- unless there are 'save' and 'close' commands in the action. If you choose 'Save and Close' the files will be saved in the same folder as the source -- but be aware that you will overwrite the existing files unless the file endings in the action's save step are different from the source files. If you don't want to overwrite the originals or save in the same folder with a different file ending, choose 'Folder'. In this case click the 'Choose' button and select a folder to write the new files to -- you can make a new folder if necessary.

Finally -- make sure that the 'Override action "Save As" Commands' box is checked. If you don't do this, the files will be saved in the location you used when creating the action.

When ready, click OK and Photoshop will now automatically process all the images you have chosen. There's often time for a quick coffee while it does so.

Edited by Mark L - 02 October 2010 at 18:07

Edge mask sharpening:

http://www.the-aperture.com/EdgeMaskSharpen.htm

Edited by Micholand - 05 October 2010 at 18:19

Advanced sharpening techniques

Hi. To photoshop experts, can you recommend a good site for me to read to start learning photoshop (basic to advance)? Thanks.

adriangpc wrote: Hi. To photoshop experts, can you recommend a good site for me to read to start learning photoshop (basic to advance)? Thanks.

Try this as a starting point

Cambridge in Colour is a very useful resource too.

Edited by Micholand - 30 January 2011 at 10:09

Double processing in Camera Raw (and Photoshop)

gaging wrote: adriangpc wrote: Hi. To photoshop experts, can you recommend a good site for me to read to start learning photoshop (basic to advance)? Thanks. I like videos for learning Photoshop, because you can see both how to do something, and the result of doing it. You can also play videos over and over until you understand the concept. I learned most of what I know about Photoshop from Mark Johnson's Photoshop Workbench videos. He publishes a new one each Thursday on his website. Mark's early Photoshop Workbench videos covered basic Photoshop editing very thoroughly, and they are the ones that I feel are the most helpful for beginners. Mark sells a DVD that contains the first 200 episodes of Photoshop Workbench. I think buying Mark's DVD would be an easier and less expensive way to learn Photoshop than trying to learn from books, and the series is also more comprehensive than any other site I have found. In addition, Mark also sells another DVD with episodes 201 to 250 of his Photoshop Workbench series. However, his later Photoshop Workbench videos deal more with ways to achieve effects rather than pure photo editing. These are of less interest to me because I'm not into effects. However, I still watch them because I sometimes learn little Photoshop tips that are helpful.

I concur, I have the DVD and it's well worth the money if you like his techniques.