1. Photoshop Actions Lights, Camera, Actions in Photoshop

2. Objective The student will record an action in Photoshop that documents an effect of their choice.

3. Tutorial Criteria The student will read through the following criteria to learn about actions in Photoshop. Using the instructions in the tutorial the students will write an action for the effect of their choice. Student will turn in the atn file to the class Dropbox when they are finished.

4. What Are Actions A tool in Photoshop that can quickly complete repetitive actions by recording the steps. A way to store an effect that you use often to edit your photos.

5. Why Are Actions Important To You? They save you time. You can share editing techniques with other photographers and vice versa. It is a way to apply editing techniques that may be beyond your skill set.

6. Exploring the Actions Palette in Photoshop

7. The Actions Palette The Actions palette is where anything and everything related to actions is done, from recording and playing them to saving, loading, editing, deleting, and organizing them. You can access it by going up to the Window menu at the top of the screen and choosing Actions.

8. The Controls If you look down at the very bottom of the Actions palette, you’ll see a series of icons. Starting from the left (the square icon), we have Stop, Record, and Play, followed by the New Action Set icon, the New Action icon, and finally, the standard Trash Bin icon for deleting actions and action sets.

9. The Palette Menu As with all of the palettes in Photoshop, the Actions palette comes with its own fly-out menu where we can access various options and commands, as well as load in some additional action sets.

10. Recording An Action In this section I will demonstrate how to record a “Soft Glow” effect as an action.

11. Create A New Action Set Open any image in Photoshop. Create a new Action Set because all actions need to be placed in a folder.

12. Name Your Action Set

13. Do You See Your Action Set? You should now see your action set in the actions palette. You do not have to create a new action set every time you create a new action because an action set folder can hold multiple action recordings.

14. Create a New Action Now that we an action set to place our new action in, let’s create our action! To create a new action, click on the New Action icon at the bottom of the Actions palette:

15. Name Your Action

16. Click the Record Button

17. You Are Recording As soon as you click on the Record button, you’ll see your new action appear in your action set inside the Actions palette. You’ll also see that the Record icon at the bottom of the palette has turned red, letting you know that you’re now in record mode. Remember, there’s no reason to panic. Yes, we’re now in record mode, but this isn’t like recording a movie. Actions are not recorded in real time. All Photoshop is going to record are the actual steps we perform, not how long it takes us to complete them.

18. Make a Snapshot For the first step in my “Soft Glow” effect action, I’m going to tell Photoshop to take a snapshot of how the image looks just before the effect is applied. You don’t necessarily have to include this as the first step in an action, but since it gives us an easy way to undo the effect if we need to, it doesn’t hurt to include it. So, with Photoshop recording what I’m doing, I’m going to switch over to my History palette for a moment, which by default is sitting next to the Actions palette, and I’ll click on the New Snapshot icon at the bottom of the palette.

19. Make a Snapshot Image

20. Snapshot Appears in the History Palette

21. Look at Your Recording I’ll switch back over to my Actions palette now, and we can can see that the first step, Make snapshot, appears in the “Soft Glow” action. Our first step has successfully been recorded.

22. Duplicate the Background Layer Command J

23. Check Out Your Recording History

24. Rename the New Layer To rename the layer, double-click directly on the layer’s name, type in a new name, and then press Return. In a moment, we’re going to be applying Photoshop’s Gaussian Blur filter to this layer, so let’s name this layer “gaussian blur”:

25. Check the Actions Palette Checking our Actions palette, we can see that a third step, Set current layer, has been added to our action.

26. Change the Blend Mode With the “gaussian blur” layer selected, go up the Blend Mode option at the top of the Layers palette. It’s the drop- down box that’s currently set to “Normal”. Click on the drop-down box to open it, then select the Overlay blend mode from the list.

27. Check Out the Actions Palette Let’s look at our Actions palette again, where we can see that we now have a fourth step, also named Set current layer, added to our action. Let’s twirl the step open to view the details, and we can see that this step will change the blend mode of the currently selected layer to Overlay.

28. Apply Gaussian Blur Go up to the Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur. Drag the Radius slider at the bottom of the dialog box and select a radius value that gives your image a nice soft glow effect. I’m going to set my radius value to 13 pixels.

29. Check the Actions Palette If we look in our Actions palette, we can see that a fifth step, Gaussian Blur, has been added to our “Soft Glow” action, and if we twirl open the step, we can see from the details that the radius value in the Gaussian Blur dialog box will automatically be set to 13 pixels every time we run this action.

30. Customize Effect That’s great, but what if a radius value of 13 pixels doesn’t work as well with the next image we use with this action? As we’ve already learned, we can easily enable or disable dialog boxes when an action plays by simply clicking on on the dialog box toggle icon to the left of the step. Since I want the Gaussian Blur dialog box to appear each time I run the action, I’m going to click inside the empty toggle icon to the left of the step. When I do, a small gray dialog box icon appears, telling me that the dialog box will now pop open for me when I play the action. See image on the next slide.

31. Custom Effect Image

32. Change the Opacity To lower the opacity of the layer, go up to the Opacity option in the top right corner of the Layers palette, directly across from the Blend Mode option. Type 65% in the text box. DO NOT use the scrubber and drag to 65%. This will create way too many steps in your recorded action.

33. Stop Recording We’re done recording our action, which means we need to tell Photoshop to stop recording what we’re doing. To do that, click on the Stop icon at the bottom of the Actions palette.

34. Test Your Action Open another image in Photoshop. To run the new action on the image, I’ll select the “Soft Glow” action from inside my “My Actions” set in the Actions palette, then I’ll click on the Play icon at the bottom of the palette.

35. Test Your Action The action should stop at the gaussian blur step to allow you to adjust the settings. After you set the blur radius the action will continue to the finished effect.

36. Save Your Action File Once you have recorded your own action you need to submit your ATN file to the class Dropbox.

37. Select Your Action Set In the action palette select your action set.

38. Save Your Action With the action set selected, click on the menu icon in the top right corner of the Actions palette. This brings up the Actions palette’s menu. Select Save Actions from the menu:

39. Save Your Action Photoshop will pop open the Save dialog box. Save your action set to a location on Flash Drive.

40. You are finished! Upload your ATN file to Dropbox!

41. Additional Resources Read on to see other ways to use actions.

42. Edit an Action You can edit actions in Photoshop even after they have been recorded. Click on the following link to read more about this process. How to edit an action in Photoshop.

43. Saving and Loading Actions You can go online and look for specific Photoshop effects to add to your images by utilizing actions written by other artist. How to save and load actions in Photoshop.

44. Stepping Through an Action Have you downloaded an action from the internet and want to know exactly how it works? Follow the tutorial below: How to step through an action in Photoshop.