Photoshop Tips: Creating Your Own Actions

It's true what they say, your actions define the kind of person you are, and in Photoshop the actions you create can easily define the types of things that you do frequently. Whether you're making adjustments on family photographs, exporting images for the web, or creating incredible effects on your text, actions will help to simplify the tasks that you want to do.

Since now you're familiar with the actions palette and you've had the opportunity to play around a bit to see the kinds of things you can create with actions, hopefully you're ready to dive into making some of your own.

To create your own action, you'll want to start by creating your own action set in order to keep them organized. To create your own action set, click the tiny arrow in the upper right hand corner of your actions palette and use the menu option "New Set". Once you click on the new set option, you'll be asked to name your new set of actions.

Now that you have your very own action set, you'll want to start filling it with the tasks that you want to simplify. Select your action set from the menu and then click on the menu and select "New Action". This will prompt a box with give you the opportunity to name your new action depending on what you're going to be doing and designate the set that you want that action added too. You'll also have the option to assign a function key, or hot key, to your action.

Assigning function keys can be especially time saving if you're going to be dealing with a lot of images at the same time. Simply select one of the function keys from the pull down menu. If that function key is already assigned to another action, Photoshop will alert you by highlighting either the shift or control keys and placing a check mark in one of those boxes letting you know that you'll need to use one of those keys in combination with your function key in order to start the action.

Once you've made your selections, you'll want to click on "Record" to begin recording the steps that you want to automate.

Now it's time to go through the steps of your editing process. As you complete each step, you'll notice that your action is beginning to capture the information as you make your changes.

Once you're finished with all of the steps in the process for your action you'll want to click on "Stop Recording" from the actions menu, or use the small square stop button located in the bottom of your actions palette.

With your action now completed, you have the option inserting stop points within the action as a way to remind yourself of critical points along the way. In order to insert a stop point, click the task within the action where you want the stop point to appear and then select "Insert Stop" from the actions menu. Insert your message in the box that appears and then check the box marked "allow continue" so that the action will proceed after the message is displayed.

Stops are especially helpful if you're building actions that will be used by several different people so that they can be aware of any critical points within the action that might require special attention.

You can also make specific tasks within your action interactive. For instance, if you're setting up an action to sharpen a photograph then it will be necessary for you to adjust the sharpening levels depending on the photograph that you're working on. For this reason, you wouldn't want to record a uniform task to apply to all images.

In the event that you want the action to pause so that the user can make certain specific adjustments to an image, simply click on the small open square to the left of the task in the action where you want the user interaction to occur.

It's also easy to remove tasks from within a recorded action by selecting that task and then dragging it to the trash can in the lower right hand corner of your tasks palette. This can help you to streamline your actions and remove any unnecessary steps that might be recorded during the initial recording process.

It's always a good idea to test out your actions once you have them completed, just to make sure that there are no errors that occur during the process. In the event of errors during the action, simply make adjustments such as allowing for a stop point, or allowing user interaction in order to correct the error.

With so many possibilities, actions can not only simplify the things that you do in Photoshop but also make the more repetitive tasks a lot less time consuming. Actions are a great way to help you automate small jobs, and also help you to remember all of the steps in a longer more involved process.

When you're working in Photoshop, actions make life so much easier. But, doing the laundry will still be left up to you!