Adobe Photoshop CS5 for Photographers - Martin Evening [312]
Figure 15.2 The Actions panel column showing the different action state icons. A: This action set contains inactive actions.
B: Action contains a Pause to reveal a dialog.
C: Indicates one or more action steps are inactive and contains a Pause.
D: An active step.
E: An active step with a Pause which will open a dialog box.
F: An active step with a Stop which will open a message dialog.
When recording a Photoshop action, I suggest you avoid recording commands that rely on the use of any named layers or channels that may be present in your test file, as these will not be recognized when the action is applied to a new image. Also try to make sure that your actions are not always conditional on starting in a specific color mode, being of a certain size, or being a flattened image. If the action you intend recording is going to be quite complex, the best approach is to carefully plan in advance the sequence of Photoshop steps you intend to record. A Stop can always be inserted in an action which will then open a message dialog at a certain point during playback (see page 721 and Figure 15.5). This can be used to include a memo to yourself (or another user replaying the action), reminding what needs to be done next at a certain stage in the action playback process. Or if the action is to be used as a training aid, a Stop message could be used to include a teaching tip or comment.
If you want to save an action, it must be saved within an action set. So if you want to separate an action out to have it saved on its own, click on the ‘Create new set’ button in the Actions panel to create a new set, drag the action to the set, name it and choose ‘Save Actions…’ from the Actions panel fly-out menu (the action set must be highlighted, not the action). The following steps show how to record a basic action.
Descriptions of all actions
If you hold down the keys as you choose ‘Save Actions…’ this saves the text descriptions of the action steps for every Photoshop action currently in the Actions panel.
1.
Here, I wanted to offer a practical example of how to create an action, by showing how the print sharpening steps shown on pages 682–683 could be recorded as an action. The first step was to create a new action set. To do this, I clicked on the ‘Create new set’ button (see Figure 15.2), named this ‘Print sharpening actions’ and clicked OK.
2.
I then clicked on the ‘Create new action’ button (circled) in the Actions panel, named this action ‘300ppi-glossy-inkjet’ and clicked the Record button.
3.
I then used a sample image to apply all the steps described on pages 682–683.
4.
When I had finished recording all the steps, I clicked the Stop button to end the recording. In the Actions panel view shown on the right you can see a fully expanded list of all the steps, including the settings used. The action could be applied to other images by clicking on the Play button, or applied as a batch action process. You can also switch the Actions panel to Button mode (Figure 15.3), which makes the actions playback even simpler.
Figure 15.3 This shows the Actions panel in Button mode, where all you have to do is click on a button to initiate a recorded action (like the 300ppi-glossy-inkjet action circled above).
Troubleshooting actions
If an action doesn't seem to working, first check that the image to be processed is in the correct color mode. Many actions are written to operate in RGB color mode only, so if the starting image is in CMYK, the color adjustment commands won't work properly. Quite often, assumptions may be made about the image data being flattened