Photoshop Actions

ACTIONSare an automated way of performing tedious tasks in Photoshop. For a busy professional they can save hours of work, but you have to put in a little bit of effort to learn your trade before you can reap the benefits. Actions work best for repetitive tasks, which do not require intervention by the photographer. Thus cutting out different shapes is not an actionable task but changing all images to CMYK or resizing all images are actionable. In combination with Batching and Droplets, actions will run jobs totally hands free.

In general, books on Photoshop are a bit shy on information about using actions. WOW! For Photoshop 6 comes closest, but even Adobe, Classroom in a Book is a bit light on the subject. Fortunately the manual with Photoshop 7 is quite good and runs to 22 pages. Bearing this in mind we show you how to take a folder full of images at full digital camera resolution and prepare them for web page delivery, sized down and saved out as small jpeg files. We have chosen to grind through it "recipe fashion" so listen carefully 007! You may record and use any other actions in the same basic way.

1. Make two folders on your desktop, one called Source and the other called Destination. Photoshop actions

2. Copy the files you wish to resize into the Source folder leaving your originals intact. This is important as you can save over your originals if you make a mistake in the settings! If your files are really important, follow David Simm's advice from last issue and make a backup CD before you start anything. Right Clicking the files or the Folder and changing the properties to Read Only will also add a measure of protection.

3. Now open Photoshop.

4. Click Window>Actions to bring out the Actions Palette.

5. Click on the Drop Down triangle and click Clear all Actions. This is not vital but it makes things easier to follow at first. You can always reload Actions, you have not deleted them, (click load actions and you will find lots and lots of them, go have a play some time).

6. In the drop down click New Set and name the set "Resize for Web" then click OK.

7. In the drop down click on New Action then Record and note that the red record button lights up at the base of the palette.

8. Open one of the files in the Source folder.

Now we are going to use the Resize feature of Photoshop, which will change the size of any image so that it fits onscreen in a web browser. You can constrain either and both width or height.

9. The recording is still on so click File>Automate>Fit Image. Now choose your resize limits, we chose 800 wide by 600 high to ensure the images will show on older, lower resolution monitors. When you click OK note that the file is resized and jumps smaller on the screen.

10. Click File>Save As, then select the Destination Folder on the desktop and JPEG as the file format, then Save. Set the compression level to the one you desire.

11. Hit the Stop Recording Button. Collapse the action set then click on the right facing drop down triangle and Save Action. Actions in Photoshop are saved by default in the folder "C:\Program Files\Adobe\Photoshop 7.0\Presets\Photoshop Actions". There you will find all the actions which list at the bottom of the Actions Drop down menu.

12. Now look in the Destination Folder and you should find a file with the name of your original but it should be much smaller in size. Drag it to the Recycle Bin as it is not needed.

13. Click on File>Automate>Batch and you should find yourself with "Resize for Web" still there.

14. Click on the "Source" drop down and highlight Folder. Click on the Choose button then navigate to and highlight the Source Folder on your desktop, then click OK.

15. Click on the "Destination" drop down and highlight Folder. Click on the Destination Button navigate to the Destination Folder on your desktop and highlight it then click OK.

16. Check the "Override "Action Open" Command and Override "Save As" Command and also check the "Suppress Color Profile Warning"

17. Click the main OK Button and it should all happen before your eyes. When Photoshop has finished, inspect the destination folder on your desk top to see that resized files have appeared. Also cross check that your Source Folder Files are as they were.

To Make a Droplet

The next stage in automation sophistication is to make a Droplet. This is an executable file (icon), which plays an action set even if Photoshop is closed. You make the droplet and save it to the desktop. Then you can drag individual files onto the Droplet Icon so that it highlights. When you let go, the action will be carried out either within Photoshop (if is open) or after automatically opening it.

To create a droplet click on File>Automate then Create Droplet. Fill out the palette the same as for Batching except that there is no Source to define. Click on Choose and select the Destination Folder on your Desktop. Give the Droplet a name e.g. "Size for Web" and when you click on OK an icon of Size for Web.exe appears on the desktop.

Refinements

When the Folder option is selected in the Destination Choose drop down you can add additional information to your file naming automatically. The drop downs at the bottom of the Batch Palette are activated with save to folder. There are 6 of them each

ACTIONS on the WEB There are a wealth of free downloads and “pay for” actions CDs on the web. Use your search engine or try the URL below for a start www.adobestudioexchange.com

What’s it worth?

We took a typical job of arriving back from a wedding with 100 digital shots which required preparing for uploading to your web site so that the client could view them. Each file needed to be opened, sized to fit a web browser then saved to a different destination with a unique number as a JPEG file. The task took 33s per image or about 55minutes excluding checking for mistakes. Using the droplet developed for this article the job was boxed off in 162seconds. Even allowing for the 4m30s it took to create and check the droplet out we were still way ahead of the game! Photoshop actions

Right: When checking out your action set ensure that your
originals are intact and that the destination files are as you want
them. Here we have screen grabbed the Source and Destination
files, showing the reduction in file size from around 2.5MB to
60KB. When you have proved your Action set remove the
destination files and start afresh with the real job.

Left: The correctly set up dialogue for the Action shown in
the example. Take particular care over the override settings as
failing to do so can result in your PC stalling or your files being
over written.

Below: There area wealth of file naming options

when you save out to a new Destination Folder.

Left: The set up palette for Droplets is similar to Batch. In operation, you drag a file or folder onto the Droplet and the hard work is done automatically.

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Photo Quote: The virtue of the camera is not the power it has to transform the photographer into an artist, but the impulse it gives him to keep on looking. - Brooks Anderson