photoshop tips and tricks

Record an action in Photoshop

Preparing to record an action

You use the Actions panel to record, play, edit, and delete individual actions. You also use the Actions panel to save and load action files. First, you’ll open the Actions panel and open the additional files you’ll be using.

1. Choose Window > Workspace > Automation to display the Automation workspace.
The Actions panel is prominent in this workspace, as is the Layers panel.
2. In the Actions panel, click the Create New Set button ( ). Name the new set My Actions, and click OK.


Figure 1
3. Choose File > Open. In the Open dialog box, navigate to the Lesson10 folder. Shift-select the IMG_1443.psd, IMG_1444.psd, IMG_1445.psd, and IMG_1446. psd files. Then, click Open.

Now there are five tabs, representing five open files in Photoshop.

Recording actions

You’ll record the steps for matching colors, sharpening, and saving the images as an action.

1. Select the IMG_1443.psd tab. Then, in the Actions panel, click the New Action button ( ).
2. In the New Action dialog box, name the action color match and sharpen, and make sure that My Actions is selected in the Set menu. Then click Record.
Don’t let the fact that you’re recording rush you. Take all the time you need to do this procedure accurately. The speed at which you work has no influence on the amount of time required to play a recorded action.
3. Choose Image > Adjustments > Match Color.

Figure 2
NOTE
You must finish all steps in this procedure without interruption. If you need to start over, skip ahead to step 8 to stop the recording; then drag the action onto the Delete button in the Actions panel. Use the History panel to delete any states after you opened the files. Then start again at step 1.
4. In the Match Color dialog box, select IMG_1441.psd from the Source menu, select Background from the Layer menu, and make any other changes that you made when you matched color for IMG_1442.psd. Click OK.

Figure 3
5. Choose Filter > Sharpen > Unsharp Mask. The settings in the Unsharp Mask dialog box should be the settings you used for the IMG_1442.psd file. Click OK.

Figure 4
Photoshop preserves your most recent settings in filter dialog boxes until you change them again.
6. Choose File > Save As. In the Save As dialog box, choose TIFF for the Format, keep the same name (IMG_1443), and save the file to the Ready For Panorama folder. Click Save. In the TIFF Options dialog box, make sure LZW is selected, and click OK.
7. Close the image.
8. Click the Stop button () at the bottom of the Actions panel to stop recording.

The action you just recorded is now saved in the Actions panel. Click the arrows to expand different sets of steps. You can examine each recorded step and the specific selections you made.

Figure 5

Playing an action

You’ll apply the color match and sharpen action to one of the other three image files that you opened.

1. Click the IMG_1444.psd tab to make that image active.
2. In the Actions panel, select the color match and sharpen action in the My Actions set, and then click the Play button ( ).

Figure 6

The IMG_1444.psd image is automatically color matched, sharpened and saved as a TIFF so that it now matches the IMG_1443.tif image for these properties. Because you recorded closing the file, the file has also been closed.

NOTE

If the IMG_1441.psd file is not the third tab, it will close before the color can be matched for one or both of the other images. Match Color requires that the source file be open.

Batch-playing an action

Applying actions is a time-saving process for performing routine tasks on files, but you can streamline your work even further by applying actions to all open files. Two more files in this project need to be prepared for the panorama, so you’ll apply your automated action to them simultaneously.

1. Make sure that the IMG_1445.psd and IMG_1446.psd files are open. Close the IMG_1441.psd file, and then open it again to ensure that it is the third tab.
2. Choose File > Automate > Batch.
3. In the Play area of the Batch dialog box, choose My Actions from the Set menu, and choose color match and sharpen from the Action menu.
4. Choose Opened Files from the Source menu. Leave Destination set to None, and click OK.
Figure 7

The action is applied to both IMG_1445.psd and IMG_1446.psd, so the files have the same color matching and sharpening and are saved as TIFF files. The same action was applied to IMG_1441.psd, even though its color was matched with itself.
In this exercise, you batch-processed three files instead of making all the same changes in each of them; this was a mild convenience. But creating and applying actions can save significant amounts of time and tedium when you have dozens or even hundreds of files that require any routine, repetitive work.