Creating Actions In PhotoShop

[LadyGardenSnake]

Actions can be made in Adobe Photoshop versions 4.0-7.0 Actions allow you to perform a series of filters/adjustments/transformations at the click of a button. If you do something over and over like resizing photos or adding copyright information to photos, then making an action for it will save you lots of time. I will also show you how the batch processing works. Batch processing allows you to run an action on a whole directory. If at any time your not sure what I'm talking about click on the "Show Me" link to see a screen cap of what I am describing.



Creating Actions
1.Open Photoshop. To find your actions palette go to Window on your toolbar and go down to ?Show Actions? click on that to open your actions palette. Show Me



2. In the action palette you?ll find some pre loaded Default actions. At the bottom of the palette, you?ll see some buttons. From left to right: stop playing/recording button, begin record, play selection, create new set, create new action and delete. Show Me



3. Open a picture that you want to resize (file-open-select the directory that has your photos, select 1 pic, click open). Please note that while you are in record mode, it will record everything you do in Photoshop, so make sure that all you have open is the 1 photo that you want to resize, and nothing else.

1. Now at the bottom of the actions palette select the ?Create New Set? button, this will bring up a window for you to name your new folder that you will put your new action in, you can rename the it if you want or leave it as Set 1, I?m naming mine ?PhotoTools? Show Me

2. Next select the ?create new action? button, this will bring up a window for you to name your new action and give you a choice of which folder you want to file it in your action pallet, I named my action ?Resize Horizontal? and right below you?ll see ?set? from that menu I choose the ?Photo Tools? folder I created so this new action will be inside that folder. Show Me

3. Now hit record, this will close the window and from this point on it's recording your action.Show Me

4. Now go to the tool bar and select image, scroll down until you see ?Image Size? Show Me click on that and a new window will open

5. Check to make sure that there is a check mark in the box next to ?constrain properties? Show Me (Doing this will prevent your photo from becoming distorted) next enter the new size of your photo the original size of my photo was width 1024 x height 768, I want it to be width 600 x height 450. I can add in the width I want and because I have selected ?constrain properties? the Height will automatically show up, now if for some reason your photo is an odd size (which can happen if you?ve bought content from a provider that crops their pics) the height will automatically adjust to perfectly maintain the ratio of the width. Click ?ok? and then go to your action palette and click ?Stop Playing/Recording? Show Me and now your done.



4. Time to test your action open a new photo and go to the action palette if the Photo Tools folder is closed click the arrow next to it and then you?ll see your new action Resize Horizontal highlight that action by clicking on it once and hit play to see your work in motion. You can now do the same process to create an action to resize your photos that are Vertical/Portrait



Batch Processing
Now lets say you have a directory full of photos that need to be resized, they are all horizontal and you want to resize all of them instead of resizing them one at a time. You use this to run the same action on a group of photos in the same directory. For starters create a new directory on your hard drive name it ?test? inside that folder copy some photos you want to resize horizontally, make sure you still have your originals in a different directory.



Here are the steps to do batch processing:

1. Group all the images that you want to resize into the same folder.



Go to File on the toolbar menu and go down to automate then over to batch, Show Me
A window will pop up Show Me
Step 1. select the folder that contains your action in this case it?s ?photo tools?
Step 2. Select the action ?resize horizontal?
Step 3. Choose folder from the source drop down menu
Step 4. Choose your directory with the pics
Step 5. Choose folder from the destination drop down menu
Step 6. Choose the directory with your pics again so they will be saved in the ?test? (later when you do this you can have the photos saved to any directory you want)
Step 7. Click ?ok? and sit back and watch as Photoshop opens each photo, resizes it, saves it, closes it, and goes to the next until all the photos in that folder have been resized.
Now when the batch process is finished open the photos in your test folder just to see the result.

Well Thats all for now, if you have any questions or had any problems along the way feel free to contact me on ladygardensnake.com and I'll try to help.

ooh yeah i work for pimproll.com gotta problem with that. suck me off