How to Use and Create Photoshop Actions (Just the Basics)
by Adrienne Cleveland (all rights reserved)
This Tip is intended to be a very basic introduction for people wanting to learn how to use actions in Photoshop.
We offer
Photoshop actions,
including some
freebies,
and this tip will tell you how you can record your own.
Using Photoshop actions can make your life easier and help you edit your photos more quickly.
Basically, actions are nothing more than a series of normal Photoshop operations
recorded so you can run them in sequence quickly, without having to remember just what steps to do, and in
what order.
The Actions Window
Here's what the Photoshop Actions Window looks like. If you don't see it when you have Photoshop open, you
can make it visible by choosing Window/Actions from the main Photoshop menu.
In most cases,
you don't want to click either the checkmark or the rectangle on the left
side of the window
(see Checkmarks and Rectangles below)
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Button Mode
Actually, there is one other way the Photoshop Actions Window can appear, if you are using "Button Mode."
In this mode, all the actions appear as buttons. You can switch between modes using the menu that pops up
when you click the little right-arrow in the upper-right corner.
Button Mode may sound like a good idea, but in practice it can be very confusing, especially if you
have a lot of actions, so we recommend that
you turn it off.
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To turn Button Mode on or off, just click "Button Mode" in the menu to check or uncheck it.
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Loading Actions
There are several methods of loading actions, but we'll talk about two:
Using the Photoshop Actions Menu (Windows or Mac)
Drag and drop (Windows)
Drag and drop (Mac)
Using the Photoshop Actions Menu (Windows or Mac)
One way to load an action is to use the menu in Photoshop's Actions Window. To open the menu,
click the arrow in the upper right corner.
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Then select "Load Actions..." and browse to the folder on your hard disk where you have placed the
action (.atn) file.
If you need to load style files, use the menu in Photoshop's Styles window in a similar fashion.
Returning to Your ReadMe file
If you got to this webpage from a ReadMe file and want to go back there, use your browser's "Back" button.
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Drag-and-Drop (Windows)
Another way to load a Photoshop action is to use drag-and-drop with your mouse:
- Open Photoshop and open the folder that contains the Photoshop action set that you want to load, and
position the two windows side-by-side (see screenshot below).
- Click the action file (the one ending in ".atn") and while holding down the mouse button, drag the action to the Photoshop window. If you need to load style files, you can drag them in the same way.
- Release the mouse button. You will now find the action in Photoshop's Actions palette.
Returning to Your ReadMe file
If you got to this webpage from a ReadMe file and want to go back there, use your browser's "Back" button.
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Drag-and-Drop (Mac)
This works for OS X Lion, and probably for other versions.
- Open the folder that contains the Photoshop action set that you want to load.
- Click the action file (the one ending in ".atn") and while holding down the mouse button, drag the action to the Photoshop icon
on the dock at the bottom of your
screen. If you need to load style files, you can drag them in the same way.
- Release the mouse button. Photoshop will start, and you will now find the action in Photoshop's Actions palette.
Returning to Your ReadMe file
If you got to this webpage from a ReadMe file and want to go back there, use your browser's "Back" button.
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Running Actions
Let's assume that we want to run one of the frame actions from ACsFlexibleFrames.
First, if the action set is closed, as it is in this screen shot, you need to click the arrow
to the left of the action set name to open the set.
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Now that the set is open, you select the action you want to run by clicking on the name of the action,
for example "FramedChiseledMedMatte," which will highlight the name.
Then click the "Play Selection" button at the bottom of the Actions window (it's a right arrow).
The action will run, and your photo will be matted and framed.
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Checkmarks and Rectangles
You can see that all of the actions above have checkmarks, and a few of them
have icons in the rectangles to the right of the checkmarks. What do these mean?
Checkmarks
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A checkmark to the left of a step in an action means that the step will execute when the action is run.
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A black checkmark to the left of an action name or an action set name means that
all steps inside will execute.
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A red checkmark to the left of an action name or an action set name means that only
some steps inside will execute.
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Rectangles
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An icon in the rectangle to the left of a step in an action means that the step will stop for your input when the action is run.
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A black icon in the rectangle to the left of an action name or an action set name
means that all steps inside will stop for your input.
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A red icon in the rectangle to the left of an action name or an
action set name means that only
some steps inside will stop for your input.
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Again, in most cases,
you don't
click the checkmarks or the rectangles. We'll see when and how to use them when we record
our own action below.
If you inadvertently click the rectangle beside the name of an action or action set,
it will add or remove the icons from every step inside, and usually that
is not a good thing. If you do that, and you have a good copy on disk, you can always
reload the action from disk.
If you want to "turn off" a step in an action,
you can uncheck it. If you uncheck an action set or action instead of a step, it turns off everything
inside -- again, that's usually not a good thing.
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Toggling Dialogs On and Off
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If you want to manually control input to a single step in an action, first you need to "open" up the action
by clicking the arrow just to the left of the action name. This will open the action so you can see
all the steps inside.
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Once the steps are visible, you can toggle on the dialog for a step by
clicking the blank rectangle beside the name of the step.
When a dialog is toggled on, when you play (run) the action, it will stop for your input when it gets to that step.
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Recording/Creating Actions
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If you have a series of steps you perform often, you might want to record your own action. To do that, first decide
if you want to put it in an existing action set or if you need to create a new set.
To create a new set, open
the Photoshop Actions Window menu, and select "New Set."
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To record an action, open the Photoshop Actions Window menu and select "New Action," specify a name and select
the Action Set you
want to place it in, and then click the "Record" button. Notice that the small circle
at the bottom of the Actions Window is now red. Now perform all the steps you want to
record, and when you are done, click the square to the left of the red circle to
stop recording.
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Re-recording a Step to Change the Default Values
The easiest way to re-record a step in the action is to first turn on the dialog for the step (see
Toggling Dialogs On and Off), and then run the action until it stops at that step
to show a dialog box.
When the action shows the dialog box, click "Cancel," and then select "Record again" from the Actions window menu.
Once you have the step recorded the way you want it, you can turn off the dialog again.
A Simple Example
For a (very) simple example, let's assume that you want to record an action that will resize a
landscape-oriented photo for the web
and sharpen it. Let's assume that you always want your photos to be 600 pixels wide,
but that you want to control the amount of sharpening for each photo.
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First, open a photo to work on.
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If you don't want to put this action in an existing action set, create a new one (in this case, "PrepareForWeb").
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Start recording your action (in this case, "LandscapePhotos").
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From the main menu, use "Image/Image Size" to resize the photo and
then use "Filter/Sharpen/Unsharp Mask" to sharpen it.
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Stop recording.
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Your action now looks like this.
Unfortunately, it always sharpens the same amount, and you wanted to be
able to control the amount of sharpening for each photo. Here's where that rectangle
to the left of the Unsharp Mask step will help.
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Click the rectangle to the left of the Unsharp Mask
step to put an icon in it, and the next time you run the action,
it will show you the Unsharp Mask dialog, where you can set the amount of sharpening.
Notice that clicking the rectangle put a dark-framed icon beside
the Unsharp Mask step, and it also put red-framed icons beside the action name and
the action set name. A red-framed icon means that some, but not all, of the steps inside
an action or action set will stop for user input.
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When you're done with an action, it's a good idea to use the Actions Window menu
to save a copy to your hard disk.
We have many
Photoshop Actions available here at Shutterfreaks:
some free, and some for sale.
For more information about Photoshop, check out
our Tips page and
our Links page.
