Feb 09
Do you automate your design workflow in Photoshop?
2005 at 04.56 am posted by Veerle Pieters
Most of you have probably worked with the Actions palette in Photoshop before or have used the Automate Batch feature. Today, while working in Photoshop I figured, I’ll record my actions this way I don’t have to redo these steps later on. But then I wondered if it would be better to drop a style in the Style palette? You see, in a lot of situations these features are a God’s gift. It saves you heaps of time and you also don’t have to wonder how you did things to achieve the exact result.
For those who don't know what an Action is. It's a recorded series of operations in Photoshop that, once recorded, can be applied to another image or series of images by pressing the Play button. You can share these actions with other users.
One of my design habits is saving a set of Swatches for each project. Another interesting situation where I use the Action palette is when I need to deliver a source file to my client for for updating content. For The Library of Congress we often need to deliver content like this. They know Photoshop just well enough to export images for the web, but that's almost it. What I do is delivering them an Action Set with a bit of explanation on how to use them. Selecting the Action and clicking the Play is all what they have to do. In other words very efficient and time saving.
A few tips that might come in handy:
- To correct a mistake while recording an Action just undo it (command/control + z) and keep on going. You can delete your step afterwards.
- You can build in Stop dialogues if you come across things that can't be recorded (like drawing a line with a brush) or if you need to enter specific data that differs from situation to situation, like measurements.
At this moment I have just the Default Actions stored but I have saved some sets for a few projects on the server. When I need them I just load them in. So what are your design habits on this matter? As always I'm interested in finding out what's stored in your Action palette?
19served
1
I tend to always keep some custom re-sizing actions that i have recorded myself. A few different sharpening methods, greyscale conversions, some frames for bordering images on the fly… other than that i prefer to handle image saturation, level and curve individually. Lots and lots and lots of books say that you can apply batch processing for these and you are done. I tend to disagree. NO two images are ever same. so no two lighting treatment must be the same. but thats just me :)
2
I’d say what Amit said, if only he hadn’t said it first. (Does that compute?) :)
3
The first action I use on a project is the “make a complete design out of random graphics"-action.
unfortunatly, this action has some big bugs in it so I still need to do all these steps manual.
The same counts for the “clean up office”, “make coffee” and the “pay all bills” actions. Maybe I need to read the manual again.
4
I use several actions ‘recorded’ by myself, e.g. to make thumbs with a border and a drop shadow of larger images for use in a website.
The last action I used was to make graphical titles for above articles… Only had to press play… type in the new title and new filename and PS created a nice 16 color transparent GIF. This way I could create about 120 images in just one hour ;-)
5
I’m afraid mine are pretty boring: add an image to a frame, make a thumbnail, save for web. I didn’t know you could undo whilst recording, though. Thanks!
6
I make use of a lot of actions. If I do the same thing more than a couple of times, I want to record it & use actions. The only time I use a batch action is to resize directories of images.
Some of the actions I have loaded:
* Channel Mixer & convert to grayscale
* Resize images to standard sizes for page layouts & PPT
* Sketch - removes background & sharpens digital photos of my notebook sketches: Auto Levels; Unsharp Mask 500%, 3.5 px, 12; Select red channel, levels: input 108, 120; convert to grayscale
* Apply Shadow / Highlight to a duplicate layer
* Variations of Rob Carr’s B & W conversion process (see http://www.designbyfire.com/000100.html)
* Tint b & w images by converting to RGB & add a fill layer
* Sharpen by duplicating layer, set mode to overlay, and apply high pass filter
Using actions to resize images always gave me trouble because portrait and landscape images must be handled differently. So I made an action for sizing the vertical dimension and an action for sizing the horizontal dimension. Recently I discovered Automate | Fit Image, which handles all cases.
7
I’ve used them for random things in the past. Currently the only actions besides the defualt I have loaded are Mister Retro’s Machine Wash Filters. Though I’ve been trying to avoid automating my “worn” graphic playing.
8
These are organized based on when I added them rather that grouping similar and assigned to F keys:
F2= crop selection
F3= dupe layer
F4= flip to RGB
F5= resize to 170 height
F6= resize to 170 width
F7= fill w/ 1px horizontal stripes
F8= enlarge canvas 20%
F9= 1px stroke inside selection
F11= resize to 66%
F12= crop layer (non-transparent px)
I have used some of these since Photoshop 4 - there may be built-in shortcuts in later versions.
9
The only actions that I have on my pallette include image resize functions. I mainly use them when I’m going thru a large amount of photo’s that need to be certain min-widths or min-heights.
On my styles pallette I have general stuff like a 1px solid black border, or a 3 pixel drop shadow. I try to veer away from stuff like making a really cool style that I use often...I generally try and keep all new designs unique.
10
There are three custom actions that i cannot work without, workspace switching! Did you know you can save you pallet locations? (window->workspace) if you do this while recording an action, you can play it and you pallets will move around! For me, firstly, i ahve all the pallets on the right. But then when i need to work on something under the pallets!! so a quick press of F3, and all the pallets are arranged on the left hadside. F4 moves them all back. last is the navigator and info pallet only, thats F5. I use a 23” display, and usually have the picture filling the screen, try pressing “f” a couple of times, so i am always moving pallets around
11
I use the Auto Batch feature with a custom made action quite often, especially after I’ve designed some 60 greeting cards or so and need to create smaller thumbnails of them for a catalog. It’s also very handy for renaming a whole bunch of images to something else.
p.s. Is that Max Rudberg’s “Milk” ShapeShifter theme you’re using? I use it too sometimes, but my favourite is his “Brushed” theme - it makes gives everything that Brushed Metal look even PS. ;)
12
If you just hit ‘tab’ you can hide all the pallettes. no need moving them to the left.
also screen switching “F” will go from the windows, to a full screen with some tools, to a full black screen.
13
This comment has nothing to do with this post, i just found an interesting site that i want to show you. Nice navigation.
14
I love photoshop actions. I use alot of custom ones but my favourite is the one that takes a square selection, flattens the image, crops it, brings up the save as dialog then undoes the crop and undoes the flatten.
Sorta like an auto crop-save-restore.
15
Excellent action Simon. I immediately added that one. I also added one to convert a background layer in a new file to a regular layer. Those locked background layers always annoy me - I’m not sure what would be useful about them.
Now I need to add a file sync program to keep my Photoshop settings (workspace, actions, styles, etc) the same on 2 computers.
16
To convert a locked background layer into a normal layer you can just double click.
Hopefully I haven’t offended you by being too obvious but an action to do that seemed OTT.
17
Not offended at all - that is the whole point of a discussion like this. It improves our knowledge of the tool. I’ve used Photoshop for 8 years and didn’t know that shortcut.
18
Hi simon and Veerle,
simon: You actually alt-doubleclick them, to make them editable - a very nice shortcut indeed.
I was wondering how you add stop markers when you work with actions - I haven’t managed to bring up the save dialog when the computer has performed actions. I kinda want it like Simon has it; somthing like action, more actions, save dialog for user to respond to, more actions.
//Henke
19
Oh yeh, alt+double-click makes it layer 0, double-click on its own brings up the dialog that lets you specify the name!
There is a little symbol to the right of the ‘tick’ next to the actions where a dialog is performed. I am pretty certain that this toggles whether the action automates the dialog or asks you.
Hopefully the attached screenie will show you what the hell I’m on about!