Photoshop Tips: Using Actions

Didn't you always wish there was a way to make your life just a little bit easier? Well with using Actions in Photoshop you're one step closer to making that wish come true. While your Actions palette isn't going to do your laundry or take the dog for a walk, it will help you to automate some of the more common tasks that you do when you're working with Adobe Photoshop.

In this series, we'll take a look at how you can use your actions in Photoshop and how you can create your own actions in order to simplify some of the common tasks that you perform.

To begin, we'll open up the Actions palette and take a look at what we have available. You'll find your actions palette on the far right hand tab of the same palette where your Layers are located. Or, you can go to Window, Actions to display the palette automatically.

Now, if you haven't used your Actions palette then you're likely just to see the Default Actions listed in the window. A quick scroll through that list probably isn't going to impress you much, since these default actions are just a way of setting up your Photoshop work space to accommodate for the project that you're working on. What we're more interested in are the actions that really show some immediate results.

If you click on the tiny arrow in the upper right hand corner of your actions palette you'll be presented with a menu for your actions palette. Included in the bottom of this menu are the pre-installed actions that the good folks at Adobe decided to bundle along with Photoshop.

If you're using Photoshop CS2, then some of your available action sets will include Commands, Frames, Text Effects, and Image Effects along with a few others that you can play around with.

To get you more familiar with some of the fun you can have with actions, select the Image Effects action set from the list. Immediately a list of pre-installed Image Effects will load into your actions palette and you can scroll through the list to get a quick idea of what you have to choose from.

Next, open a photo or other image that you would like to experiment with. Be sure to make a copy of your image, so you don't destroy your original image.

With your image now open, it's time to put some actions to work. With the pre-installed actions you can quickly make the photo look aged, add a blizzard effect or even make it appear as if it's raining. Try out these actions by selecting the one you want and then clicking the "play" arrow at the bottom of your actions palette. Immediately you'll see Photoshop going to work playing through the set of instructions that are coded into the action. To see these instructions, simply click the little blue arrow immediately to the left of the action title to expand a list beneath that action. That list will include all of the commands that have been recorded within that action so you know exactly what is being done to your image.

Once the action has completed the list of recorded commands, you'll immediately get to see the results that it had on your image. If you don't like the results, then don't worry. Simply close out the copy without saving any changes and reopen to try again, or click onto your layers palette and delete any layers that were created by Photoshop during the process of the action, leaving only your original background image.

Experiment with all of the pre-installed actions to see what kinds of effects you can create with images and text.

In the next Actions tutorial we'll take a look at how you can create your own actions, just in case the ones you already have aren't good enough!