Photoshop Actions Guide

Transcription

1 Set your imagination free! Photoshop Actions Guide Part 1 What they are and how to use them. 1

2 Photoshop Actions Guide, Part 1 What they are and how to use them, by Walton Mendelson for Creative Drawer. This guide is included free with all Creative Drawer Creative Actions. Photoshop Actions Guide, Part 2 How to make you own, by Walton Mendelson for Creative Drawer, due out summer, Copyright 2009 Walton Mendelson You may print this PDF for personal or educational use. You may not alter the PDF, claim authorship for it, or redistribute it for other than personal or educational use. All rights reserved. For Photoshop actions, brushes, etc. please visit Photoshop is a registered trademark of Adobe. 2

3 Table of Contents 4 Introduction Some thoughts about actions. Too often overlooked, but they are some of the most powerful and useful tools in Photoshop. 5 Basic Definitions The terminology isn t complicated, but there are a few things you need to know. 6 Quick Start If you re like me, you ll read everything tomorrow, but today you want to get started. It s as easy as Anatomy of the Actions Palette Photoshop has done little to make Actions sexy. The Actions Palette is utilitarian, and a bit daunting. 11 Running and Managing Actions A few tips about running and managing actions. 15 Trouble Shooting When they work... A few things you can do when they don t. 16 Resources Where you can find more. 16 Creative Drawer Creative Actions A list of our actions, features and benefits. 3

4 Introduction You ve probably seen the Actions Palette. You may have been curious and looked into actions, and read that if there is something repetitive that you do to all your photographs, such as add a copyright notice or resize them, this can be recorded and played back for each new image or batch of images. But I don t do that sort of thing, you said, just as I did. Perhaps you tried some of Photoshop s actions and wondered what the fuss was. But actions are so much more. Yes, you can record your own actions and once you learn how to write an action you ll be surprised at how often you might find a use for them but they can be very much like filters or plug-ins. In working with students over the years I have heard fairly common fears: I m afraid I ll erase it if I hit record instead of play. They are confusing, so many steps. Things pop up and then disappear. They don t work, I ve tried them. They re not creative. My response: don t worry. Although Photoshop stores its actions in Presets>Actions, Photoshop does not load them when it opens, as it does with filters. Therefore, you can store your actions anywhere you want on your computer. We recommend this because if you start accumulating actions, organizing them is easier if you get used to storing them where you want. When you load an action set, its original is safe in its folder. If you should mess up an action while playing with it, just throw it out and reload the original. Actions can be run in two modes: list or button. In the list mode, all of the steps in an action can be twirled open, and individual steps can be twirl opened. Button mode is just that: each action is a button. Click to play. If you ve been bothered by little pop-up windows that disappear and leave you confused, well, that s the fault of the action s creator. We feel that all actions should be well named (not action 1, action 2 ) and an action set should include a page or two describing how the actions run. Actions often are interactive, asking the user to enter or approve an individual actions, such as the amount of blur. As a courtesy, the author should tell the user what to expect when running an action, then the little pop-up windows aren t so annoying. As for actions not working, our experience is that over half the thousands of actions we ve downloaded and tried don t work. Sometimes it s version of Photoshop that they were created in, sometimes the actions only work when run step-by-step, and, most often, they just don t work. If you didn t pay for them, it s hard to get too angry. Finally, actions are creative to make and just as creative as filters to use. We hope you ll take some time to look at actions as one of the best tools Photoshop has to offer. This guide will go from the general let s get started instructions to more detailed information. So let s get started. 4

5 Basic Definitions Action: A recorded set of steps (operations and commands) that have been applied to an image, and that can be applied to other images by replaying the recorded steps. Just as an action is made up of action steps, an action set is made up of actions, which are in action set files distinguished by the.atn extension and contained in an action icon. Action Icons (Basic): Actions Set: action set name.atn New Set Play icon: ready and playing Record icon: ready, available, recording Stop icon: ready, mouse over New Action Trash (Delete) Action options: starts the actions options dialog. Actions palette: The actions palette has all the actions related commands and controls. Action palette menu: This is a popup menu that lists actions related commands. Action set: Individual actions can only be saved in sets of actions. Action step: an individual operation or command within an action: applying a filter or image adjustment, adding or moving a layer, adding a layer mask etc. Atn: the file extension for a Photoshop action set. Action Palette Menu Commands: Button Mode: This toggles between list mode and button mode Clear All Actions:* The clears/deletes all actions from the Actions Palette. Delete: Deletes selected action step, action, or action set Duplicate: duplicates selected action step, action or action set. Insert Menu Item: Permits inserting a command that cannot be recorded when recording. Insert Path: Permits inserting a path into an action. Insert Stop: Starts the Stop Command dialog, which can be used to insert a message inside an action. Load: Permits loading an action set. New Action: Starts the New Action dialog. New Set: Starts the New Action dialog Play: Plays all steps in a selected action Playback Options: access playback options, such as speed or audio annotation. Record Again: Plays an action, during which all dialog boxes are displayed, even ones turned off. Reset Actions:* replaces the actions in the actions palette with Photoshop s default actions. Replace Actions:* replaces the actions in the actions palette with the action set of your choice. Save Action: Saves an action set. Stop Recording: stops recording. * These commands delete the existing actions from the Actions Palette. If you have modified or created an action it will be lost if it is has not been saved. 5

6 Quick Start The next section, Anatomy of the Actions Palette will show you where things are located, and the previous section, Basic Definitions, will define basic words. If you have never tried an action: open an image in Photoshop. Then: 1) Open the Actions Palette. If you don t see a tab called Actions, click F9 or Windows>Actions to bring up the Actions Palette. 2) Select the Photoshop default actions. 3) Twirl open the action set. 4) Click on Wood frame-50 pixel 5) Click on the play button ( ). As soon as the actions starts, there will be a message window: This is a stop that permits the author of the action to alert the user to something. Click Stop to stop the action at that point. Click Continue to continue the action. Click Continue and watch the action do its magic. This action is twenty-two steps, and it shows you the power of actions. You could create exactly such a frame yourself, but you would have to remember each of the steps. Lots of actions aren t just about doing something over and over, but about doing sometimes hundreds of steps without forgetting any of them. There are several things to note with this action: It has a clear, descriptive name. It requires a minimum size image, and it uses a stop to advise you. It makes a snapshot of your image before it runs, so that you can restore the image to its original state. If you are running actions that you do not know, always work with a duplicate image. Yes there are history steps, and you can always close the image without saving it, but when things go wrong they go wrong. It s a good workflow habit to make sure you use a duplicate image. To run other actions, you will need to access the Action Palette Menu. In the upper right corner of the Action Palette there is a button: or, click on it to open the menu. Now, you can select load, navigate to the location of your actions, and select the set you want to run. Some actions won t run except in Button Mode, and, of course, you may prefer Button Mode anyway. On the Action Palette Menu, select Button mode. To run an action, just click on the Button. To open the Actions Palette in the Default Workspace: Click on B, which opens the History/Actions Palette (or F9 or Windows>Actions). Click on the Actions Tab. To go to Button Mode, click on the Actions Options Tab, then click Button Mode. 6 These actions are in Button Mode. After a stop that requires input from you, if you are required to restart the action, the button will turn bright red. Click on it to continue.

7 Anatomy of the Actions Palette The Action Palette 7

8 The Action Palette Menu 8

9 Button Mode 9

10 Enable-Disable Key in List Mode 10

11 Running and Managing Actions I hope that you ve tried some actions and haven t hit a wall yet. There are hundreds of thousands of actions available on the internet. From my experience, about half don t work. They fail because they were written with a bottom layer called Aunt Tildy and not called Background or Layer 0 ; how could you ever know? They fail because a step was turned off, or a critical dialog was suppressed. They fail because they require a filter or operation available in a more recent version. And sometimes I think they just fail because: why? because. Organizing Actions I recommend that you keep a folder of actions outside Photoshop. If you get hooked, you ll have hundreds of action sets in no time. Organizing them is only a pain if you don t ever use them. Photoshop will list all the actions in its Actions folder (Presets>Actions) on the Actions Palette Menu. If you keep everything in Photoshop you ll never figure out what you have. You can create folders for actions by author, or type, or favorite: whatever makes the most sense to you. For the same reasons, I would also suggest if you collect brushes, styles, shapes, or patterns, to keep them in directories outside of Photoshop. If you alter or revise an action, I recommend saving it with a new name. Double clicking on an Action Name or Actions Set name, lets you rename the actions or set. Running New Actions Actions run inside Photoshop using Photoshop commands. They do not operate outside it. For the most part, the worst they can do is destroy an image or cause Photoshop to freeze up. So there s no reason not to try actions you ve found online. The safest way to run any action is simple, always run new actions on a copy of your image. If you run an action called Action 1 and it adds a nice blue cast to your image, rename it Blue Cast. See Renaming later in this section. When you first run an action, accept the default settings until you know what to expect. If you do not have a guide for the action that lists the stops and settings you have to make, I strongly recommend that you run the actions and write down what settings you will have to make. Note particularly Stops that tell you to do several things after you click Continue or Stop. New Actions for the Paranoid Let me repeat, actions run inside Photoshop using Photoshop commands. They do not run outside of Photoshop. According to experts you won t get a virus or trojan from an Action, and in and of themselves, they can t do much harm. If you re suspicious or paranoid, you might look through the steps in List Mode to see if the action calls a command like 11

12 Purge Histories or Purge All, or if it invokes a script. Scripts can be destructive and Actions can execute Photoshop scripts. Most of us do not use scripts, however if you have a script, you should know what it does before you run it. Here are two script icons to look for: A script may be in text file. If you open it and it looks like code, it s probably a script file. Again, be sure you know what it does before you run it. Most actions do not invoke scripts. And when you download actions, you ll see in the files what you have before you run anything. The only other word of warning is zip files themselves. Zip files can contain viruses or trojans. Scan downloaded zip files before you unzip them. People selling actions (or scripts) want your business, and people/sites giving them away with their name clearly out front, are not likely to be the source of a virus, trojan, or malicious script. Scanning downloads is simply a good practice. However, you should be wary of sites selling Creative Suite 4 for $5.00. Running an Action Step-by-Step In List Mode you change the playback speed (this is not available in Button Mode): Actions Palette Menu>Playback Options. Although intended to help in writing and debugging actions, some actions can be dizzying as they run. Slowing them down can be helpful. The options are Accelerated, Step by Step, and Pause for X seconds. The problem is that the first two might not make much difference, and the Pause for setting pauses for a set time usually too long here and too short there. A better approach, which I have used on some actions that do not run but should, is to literally run the action step-by-step. Although this guide is not about writing and debugging actions, you may want to alter an action: enabling or disabling a dialog box, or adding, suppressing or permitting a stop. To do this, you need to figure out where in the action things are. There are several ways that give you control over the pacing: Select the step you want to play. Hold Ctrl, and click Play ( ). This plays the action. To play the next step, repeat these steps. To play a sequence of steps, or the entire action step-by-step: Select the first step you want to play. Hold Ctrl and double click the action step. The step will play then the next step will be made active (highlighted). Double click the action steps as they are highlighted. This is my preferred method. On a long action, which could have hundreds of steps, it is easy to lose track of where you are. As long as you remember that if the step is highlighted it is the next step in the action, you won t get lost at least not as easily. Suppressing a Stop If an action has lots of Stops that tell you about the author s name, his family, hobbies, and vacation plans, you can suppress them: Set the Actions to List Mode Twirl open the Action 12

13 Find the offending Stop, and uncheck the first box or first and second boxes: mark in the first column in front of the Action Name will be red. Click it once, and it will turn on all steps. Click it again and it will suppress all steps. As long as you have not saved this faulty action over the original action in your files, you can throw it out and reload the original. A.This is a Stop in List Mode. B. This is the Stop twirled open. You can read the message, and determine if this is the stop you want to suppress. C. The Stop has been suppressed, the Step will be skipped, the dialog is irrelevant. D. The Stop has been suppressed, the Step will be skipped, and the dialog has been disabled. Do not disable the dialog only: the action will stop and that is that. Double clicking inside the Stop layer will bring up the Stop, letting you edit the text. Enabling and Disabling If an action has a setting for something like Feather that just happens without any input from you, you can force the action to stop and display the dialog box, letting you change the setting. In the chart below, the first column with checks permits a step to be skipped (enabled with a check, disabled with no check). The second column with the little window-withknobs causes the action to pause, display the dialog, and let you adjust the setting. Of course, it is possible to disable enough things to make the action useless. If this happens and you cannot get back to what works: If you have suppressed a step the check A. This Step is enabled, but the dialog is not: therefore, the Step is play without any input from you. B. This is the Step twirled open. It sets a radius of 10 pixels. But suppose you want to control the amount of feathering? C. Click the second box to show the dialog. Now, when the action is played, the Feather dialog box will appear. It will be set for a radius of 10, but you can adjust it. Clicking Okay in the dialog continues the actions. D. The Step has been suppressed, so the action will skip it, even if there is a Dialog. E. The Step has been suppressed and the Dialog disabled. Skipping a Step may or may not foul up the action. You will only know this by trying it out. Adding a Stop If you like an action but it is confusing, you can add Stops and type in (255 charac- 13

14 ter maximum) a brief message. Remember, you will have to save the Action Set to keep the stop. In List mode, locate where you want a Stop: that is between which two Steps. Make the Step before where you want the Stop active. Click open the Actions Palette Menu and click on Insert Stop. You can type up to 255 characters including spaces. Click OK when you re done. There is no spell check when entering your text. Allow Continue: This can be confusing. In most cases you check Allow Continue. When you run the action the Stop will appear and you will have two choices Continue or Stop: Continue: this closes the Message box and the action continues. Stop: this closes the Message box and the action remains stopped until you click Play ( ). Renaming Actions and Action Sets can be renamed. Double click the Action or Action Set layer. A box will appear around the name and the name will be highlighted. If you start typing the name will be overwritten. If you click after the name, unhighlighting it, you can alter it. Actions and Action Sets can have the same name. Duplicating and Deleting You can duplicate and delete Action Sets, Actions, and Action Steps. Select the Set, Action, or Step, then either: Click on Duplicate or Delete in the Actions Palette Menu. Or, Drag the Action Set, Action, or Step to the trash can at the bottom of the Palette to delete, or drag to New Action icon next to the trash can to duplicate. Remember that in Button Mode these icons are not available. Button Mode Button Colors If your actions are in List Mode, open the Actions Palette Menu and click on Button Mode to display the actions in Button Mode. Because you don t see all the steps wiz by, and you can t enable or disable anything, this is a convenient, easy, and safe way to run actions. And some actions will only work in Button Mode. In Button Mode, Photoshop s Photoshop Actions use seven of the available eight colors: Yellow: image effects Green: type effects Orange: frames, borders, vignettes Purple: production Blue: textures Light gray: video Dark gray: commands Red is unassigned. There is no general consensus about what colors are assigned to an action. Color coding is not required. It is accessed first selecting an action then going to the Actions Palette Menu and clicking Action Options. This opens a dialog where you can set the color. If no color is selected, the action will appear light gray in Button Mode. 14

15 Trouble Shooting As I said before, half the actions I ve downloaded don t work, but I assume that most of them worked for someone at least once. And anyone who make actions has had exactly that experience: it worked yesterday but not today. If you are serious about learning actions, fixing them when they don t work is a great learning tool. One way to follow, debug, or learn actions is to deconstruct them. You can open all the Action Steps in List Mode, and play the action step-bystep. Another way is to print out all the action steps: Select any Action Set. Open the Actions Palette Menu. Hold down Alt + Ctrl, and click on Save Actions. The file name box will appear with the name Actions.txt, you can change the name to something more meaningful and you can save it where you want. You will have saved all the actions and actions steps, in a text file. Please note: you will save all the actions in your actions palette. If that s a lot, replace them with the Action Set you are interested in. If I only want to look at one action, I find it easier convert the entire set text and open the file in Word, using Find to locate the action I want, than to create an Action set with only the one action I want. In Photoshop Actions Guide Part 2, on creating Actions, I will look at what can go wrong in detail. For this section, I want to list a few of the things to look for that are easy to find, although not necessarily always easy to correct: Actions written in a foreign language edition of Photoshop, will look for layer names that won t necessarily be there in the English version. Translate the layer names and rewrite the Action; or delete the action. Actions often start working from the base layer. If it was developed using a base layer Background but your image starts with Layer 0 it might not work. Change your layer name, or reconstruct the Action. If an Action requires that a selection be active before you run it but you have no selection, the Action will fail. Make a selection, and if you like the Action add a Stop Message about having a selection first. Actions can invoke filters, textures, patterns, or brushes that might not exist on your computer. Either get what is missing or scrap the Action. Some commands won t work in certain color spaces (e.g. CMYK, RGB, LAB, Grayscale). Figure out what mode is required, then if you like the action add a Stop Message about the required image mode. Some commands won t work on certain image formats: the usual offender is files with indexed colors, such as gif files. If your image s layer name is Index, you should convert it to RGB before trying any action. An action won t play. Check the steps and see if anyt steps have been disabled. If Photoshop acts weird (or weirder than usual) consider deleting Photoshop s Preference File. (Hold down Alt + Ctrl + Shift just after starting Photoshop.) 15

16 Resources Photoshop Actions The Mother of All Tutorials, by Danny J. Raphael. This 293 page Word file covers just about everything and then some. It is available free at Action Central, The Photoshop Action Exchange, This site has thousands of actions, by catagory (B&W Conversion, Editing, Framing, Image enhancement, Sharpening, Sketch and Watercolor) or by developer. Al Ward s Photoshop Productivity Toolkit: over 600 Time Saving Actions. Sybex, ISBN Photoshop CS2 Action and Automation, Deke McClelland, at A great series of video talks on Actions and so much more. ActionFX Photoshop Resources, Lots of free and not so free Photoshop resources, including actions. Creative Drawer Creative Actions Creative Drawer, com, is a small site dedicated to digital graphic art: graphics for scrapbookers, artists, hobbyists, Creative Brushes, Creative Photo Masks, and Creative Actions for Photoshop users. Our Actions come with a PDF showing each action with an illustrated, stop-bystop description so you aren t in the dark as what is happening and how: 1-2 pages per action. Each action duplicates your image first, so even if you forget to work with a copy we don t. We delete unnecessary layers, but we keep those that can be adjusted for more or less of each effect. Most of our actions keep the original image, so you can turn on and off the effect to compare. However, at the end of the each action you could simply flatten it the option should be yours. The cover of this PDF shows a few of our Creative Actions: Cold Morning (snow & frost), Vignette, Selective B&W, Rounded Corner, Selective Color, Sensual Color Auburn, Paper Curl (with color and drop shadow). Set your imagination free! Photoshop Actions Guide, Part 1, 2009 Walton Mendelson 16