I've been asked to write an article describing how to create actions, so here goes...
"An action is a series of commands that you play back on a single file or a batch of files." (Photoshop CS On-line Help)
I'm using as an example one of Scott Kelby's tips from The Photoshop Book for Digital Photographers ( ), "Extreme Edge Sharpening" (pp 309). This is a well-known technique for sharpening images. The steps Scot describes are:
- Select the entire image and copy it
- Create a new alpha channel and paste the selection into the channel
- Run Filter>Stylize>Find Edges
- Adjust Levels
- Apply Gaussian blur
- Adjust Levels again
- Load the alpha channel as a selection
- Apply sharpening using Filter>Sharpen>Unsharp Mask
Some of these steps equate to a single command in Photoshop; others require multiple commands. Creating an action is simply a matter of recording the keystrokes and/or mouseclicks to perform the individual commands.
First some words about the Actions Palette (AP). This shows the action sets that are currently loaded in Photoshop:
