Here's a quick tutorial on using the Actions feature in Photoshop. This feature is great when you have a list of commands that you want to do, and have to repeat them over and over. For this tutorial, I'll show you how to make a set of commands, that with the push of one button, will resize an image, change the saturation of the picture, add a border, save the document, and close the document.

This particular tutorial is good for when you take a large amount of photos, and need to crop them to the same size and saturation values, but dont want to take all day doing it.

Lets start.

Step 1.

Open up the first file. In my examples, the original document is 1024x768 pixels.

Step 2.

Go to Window > Actions (or Alt+F9). You will notice that the Actions window appears. If you watch close enough, you'll notice that the Actions palette is actually a tabbed window behind the History palette.



Step 3.

In the Actions window, were going to go ahead and create a new action. You will have to click on the icon just to the left of the Trash Can icon in the Actions window. This is circled below. And then go ahead and name your action. I named mine "Crop Photo" since that is what we will be doing. Also, pick an function key to assign your action to. I picked F2, but you can pick any of the ones available in the drop box.



Step 4.

We want to make sure the Record button is on, which is the circle button in the Actions palette. It turns red when it is in record mode.

Note: If either or both of the Shift or Control options is selected, you will need to press Ctrl and/or Shift plus the Function button you selected to make the action work.

Note: From this point on, any action you do is recorded. Which means anytime you use a tool or apply a filter or image attribute, the action is added to the action set you are recording. If you do make a mistake, DO NOT hit undo, as the undo will be added as another action. The Undo and Redo buttons control the document not the action. Recorded actions can carry into multiple documents, as long as the Record button is still on. If you make a mistake and have to delete an action, hit the Stop button (the square button in the Actions palette on the end), and select the action(s) to delete, and click on the Trash Can icon in the Actions window. Then to continue with your recording, hit the Record button again.



Step 5.

With the Actions recording, go to Image > Image Size. I decided I want to crop all of my images to 640x480 pixels. So lets input that into the Image Size parameters, and click Ok.



You'll notice that the image resize that you did appears in the Actions window as a new action called "Image Size".

Step 6.

I wanted to add a little more color to the picture, so lets go to Image > Adjustments > Hue/Saturation. Just raise the Saturation slider up until you find a good saturation that you like, and hit Ok.



Once again, this will be added to your custom Action.

Step 7.

Next select the whole picture (Ctrl+A), this will also become another new action. Now go to Edit > Stroke. I wanted to put a border around all of my pictures, so this is how we will do this. I selected a black, 5 pixel border, which will be made on the inside of my selected area. Go ahead and click Ok.



Step 8.

Now that were finished with this picture, we want to go to File > Save

This is very important: Do not close out the document with the "Red X" in the corner. We want to close the document, and have Photoshop save the closing as an Action, so you dont have a ton of documents open in Photoshop when youre done with all of them. So go to File > Close.



Step 9.

Now that the document is closed, we can go and hit the Stop button on the Actions palette to end the Action.



Now, all you have to do is open up your next picture, and hit the Function button (I chose F2) to automatically repeat the same exact steps that you did for the last picture. Since you included saving the document, and closing it in the action, it will save the picture for you and close it out after it applies all the other actions.

This tutorial can be applied to just about any set of actions you want to do repeatitively, you dont have to add saving and closing the document everytime you make a new set of actions.

Refer to the red italicized paragraph in Step 4, if you have made any mistakes and need to remove actions.

 

This is now in the Photoshop Tutorials sticky under "Creating Actions".