Wide's World

Automate and Save Time

by

Widearea

Porno-Graphix

Into Actions

When you have some basic graphic skills under your belt, you may find that certain procedures become repetitive. Photoshop has some automation features that can make those types of tasks easier for you and enable you to save your precious time. This week we will review the creation of a basic action that can be applied or played on any file or group of files.

Creating a Basic Action

The first step in creating an action is to determine what action you find yourself performing the long, arduous way. If the process is the same for every graphic you have to work with, chances are you can record an action to perform the clicks and keystrokes for you. Not only will this save time but it may save you from the dreaded repetitive stress that can give you that meta carpal tunnel syndrome and save your ass from the surgeon's knife. In the following example we will record a basic action that will resize our pics and perform some basic image enhancements that can be applied to an entire directory of images. Our action will open the image, resize and apply some basic image adjustments with one click.

1. Select File -> Open and locate the first image upon which you are applying a worthy action.
2. Select Windows -> Show Actions to bring the actions palette window into view.

3. Click and hold to select the actions menu options in the upper right corner of the actions pallete window. Select New Action from the pull down menu to bring up the dialog box. You can name your action and set a function "hot-key" to initiate the finished action. Select "RECORD/ENTER".
4. This is where you can begin "recording" that repetitive graphics technique. With the image file active on the desktop, select Image -> Image Size to bring up the dialog box. With the Constrain Proportions radio box checked, enter the horizontal width of your image's final size. In this example we are setting up an action to resize our big pics that are horizontally oriented to 450 pixels wide. Note, you would have to create an entirely separate action for the vertical pics resizing.

5. Select Image -> Adjust -> Auto Levels which will simply use the basic Photoshop algorithm to automatically adjust the lightness and contrast of your image based on its individual histogram.
6. Select Filter -> Sharpen -> Sharpen which will simply use a basic Photoshop algorithm to automatically apply the sharpen filter to pump up your images.
7. Select File -> Save. The action is now recorded.

8. You are now ready to apply that action to a file or a group of files.
9. Try it out on some content! Select File -> Open and locate the image to play your new action.
10. In the actions pallette window pull down menu, select Play or use the hot-key you established when naming your action in step 3. Now watch as your computer does the work for you!

That is the basic method for creating and applying actions for timesaving graphic production. Obviously you can get as crazy as you want with the kind of procedures you choose to automate. A little experimenting and you will soon be saving time and all that physical exertion because we know you have better things to be doing! Enjoy the basic automation that later versions of Photoshop have and until next time, Happy Webmastering! Thanks for coming by Wide's World this week!

Reference/Useful Links

GIMP plugin registry - Even the GIMP knows about actions!
GIMP tips and tricks - When all else fails, the GIMP is free!
KAI's Power Tools Tips - Kai Kruse is the Photoshop Guru with some killer plugins. Here are some KPT resources