Graphic design is an important and time consuming element of web development and design. One of the best software programs for creating graphics for your web-site is Adobe Photoshop. With its wealth and depth of features it’s the single most powerful program I work with on a daily basis. I know for a fact that a lot of my peers use this program as well. What I’m not positively sure of is, if they use the program as efficiently as is possible, I know often I don’t, even though I know better. In this article I’m going to discuss and explain one of Photoshop’s most incredible and awesome features, but also one of the–I believe–most overlooked and under touted features. Quite simply, “Actions”.

In Photoshop there’s a built in feature that allows it’s users to automate a series of commands, by recording them, then playing them back with the click or press of a single key. Actions are very flexible and powerful, and can be extended to be even more powerful. Today, however I’m only going to cover the basics to get you started, I’ll try not to confuse anyone and make this as simple and straight forward as possible, so please bear with me a moment or thirteen.

For the purposes of this discussion, I’m using a digital camera photo, one from the Shavior, you can use any digital camera photo you’d like, the end results will vary and we are not applying any visual effects here, so the starting photo doesn’t matter.

What we’re going to do is record an action, or series of commands that we want to reapply to another photo later but might not want to repeat every time, or just because we’re getting old and forgetful. So to start just open your photo in Photoshop, I’m using 7.0.1 but, CS, CS2 and 6 are all pretty much the same setup, so no worries.

As you can see in figure one, we have our photograph opened and ready to be edited. Most digital photos direct from a digital camera are fairly large in dimension and file-size, so we’ll want to make the photo a smaller size, and maybe run auto-levels and auto-color on it, lastly we’ll sharpen it as the smaller size photo will be a little blurry.

1. figure one

We’re going to create an action to do all of these things in one click and then we can apply the action to any other photo we have for a series or web-site.

To get started on recording an action, first we need to create a “new action set”. In figure two I’ve drug the “history/actions/tool presets” palette out of its normal position in the palette line up and expanded it to full height so we can follow the action process closely. As you can see the default action set is expanded, it’s best if we collapse this, to give us a better view of that “new action set”.

2. figure two

Click the “create new set” button at the bottom of the actions palette (see figure three) this will create a “New Set” dialogue (see figure four) in the “Name:” field type “Custom Actions” and click OK.

3. figure three

4. figure four

Now click the “create new action” icon at the bottom of the palette (see figure five) this will create a “New Action” dialogue (see figure six). In the “Name:” field type; “Photo_Sizer”. For “Set:” choose the set we just made, “Custom Actions”. For “Function Key” choose F12 and check “Control”, now “color:” is optional, but let’s choose red for poops and giggles, then click the “Record” button.

5. figure five

6. figure six

Quick word of warning, from this point on Photoshop will record every thing you do to the photo, even the stuff you don’t want, mistakes etc… but, that’s alright because we can delete unwanted steps from the action later.

Ok, we’re going to apply our edits to the photo that we discussed earlier. Resize, auto-levels, auto-color, and un-sharp mask. I am not going to discuss these steps in great detail as they’re very simple and not technically part of the action creation process, but I’ll tell you where to find each menu item, and what settings to apply.

Let’s start with image resize go to image -> image size, and in the dialogue box make sure “Constrain Proportions” is checked, then in the width field type 500px or about half the size of the photo you are using. Click OK. Quickly double click the magnifying glass icon in the tool palette, to make the image 100% zoomed in, as image resizing sometimes causes the image to stay at the same zoom size as before the resizing, if your photo is already 100% ignore this step. The zoom percentage can be found in the image window title bar right next to the name of the image.

Next up, auto-levels and auto-color; go to image -> adjustments -> auto levels or (ctrl+shift+L), then image -> adjustments -> auto color or (ctrl+shift+B) both of these adjustments will be instant and should change the pictures color and depth a bit, but usually if the picture is good to start with it’ll be very subtle or have no effect at all, which is fine.

Last adjustment is un-sharp mask; go to filter -> sharpen -> unsharp mask in the dialogue box type 100% in the “Amount” field, and leave “Radius” and “Threshold” alone, click OK, also a cool trick while there, the “preview” checkbox allows you to view the image unsharpened and sharpened on the fly by toggling the check box.

Our edits are complete, we just need to stop the action recording, this is simple just click the “stop button” on the bottom of the actions palette (see figure seven).

7. figure seven

Great job! You now have your first re-usable and fun action for Photoshop.
To use your action; open a photo you want to apply those same edits to and then type ctrl+F12 or you can select the action in the actions palette and click the “play button” (see figure eight).

8. figure eight

Lastly, if you made a mistake or added a step or just want to get rid of a step, you have two options; you can turn each step off individually (see figure nine) run the action and it’ll skip the unchecked steps, or if you want to delete a step completely simply click and drag the unwanted step to the “trash can” icon on the bottom of the action palette. (see figure nine)

9. figure nine

I hope you found this useful. If you’ve any more specific or advanced questions about Photoshop actions please don’t hesitate to ask in the comments, I’ll answer as well as I can.