Automating your Work with Actions

by Irene Smith

This tutorial is for PhotoShop 4 and above, rather than PaintShop Pro. Sorry guys, but there is no equivalent to actions in PaintShop (yet, that is!) Once you begin making border sets, you will find that you perform the same actions many times as you create the buttons. You set the text, apply a filter, etc. There is an easier way to accomplish all this. You can create a generic action and use it in many different situations. It may take a few extra steps to create the action, but once you have it, you can save a great deal of time. It used to take me about an hour to create an entire set of buttons (not counting the time it takes to create the original blank button) but now that I've created a couple of different actions, I can create a set of buttons in about 15 minutes! I used PhotoShop for quite a while before I began exploring actions, but now that I've found them I'm hooked. There are tons of sites on the Internet that have pre-created actions for you to play with, but it seems that few of them talk about creating actions in the first place. They all assume you know how to do that. Although it is a simple process, there are a couple of things you need to be aware of before you can make full use of actions. This tutorial will begin by creating a simple action and then continue to discuss some other aspects of actions that may not be apparent at first glance.

The first thing you should do before creating the action is to step through the process, paying attention to what you are doing. If you think you might forget a step, then write it down. Now that you know what you are going to do, make a copy of your blank button with Image/Duplicate, set the text using the text selection tool and move it to the proper location on the button. Bring the actions palette to the front. Click on the new action button (it looks like a blank page and is, in fact, the same button you use to create a new layer). Give the action a descriptive name (button steps would be good in this case) and it will automatically go into record mode.

Repeat the steps you performed before to complete your button and then click the stop record button (the button on the left edge of the action palette with the little gray square on it.) Now the hard work is done. Create yet another copy of your blank button, set the text and click on the play button to finish it.

As far as I'm concerned, while actions are great, there are some things I wish they would do that they don't. For one thing, I use the BladePro filter most of the time on my text and instead of just repeating the last BladePro command with the same preset, it brings up the BladePro dialog box. This isn't totally bad, but it surprised me because I applied BladePro using the repeat last filter command. Also, while you can save the command that duplicates the image (and even bring up the dialog box to change the new name) you can't save the action of setting the text, so having your button action duplicate the image first doesn't make an awful lot of sense. On the other hand, it takes far less time to click one OK button than it does to perform all of the commands each time. Give actions a try and see if you don't agree.

Now for the good news. Actions can be extremely complex, including commands such as creating new layers, saving and modifying selections and applying all sorts of filters. The best way to master actions is to visit some of the sites with actions for download, download a few actions and examine them to see what they are doing. Creating good actions is a process similar to programming, the best way to learn is to examine existing actions and then, once you understand what is happening, make some changes and see what results you get.

Before we leave the topic of actions, for now at least, let's take a look at the contents of an action. If you click the arrow to the left of the action's name, you can expand the list of commands in the action and see what it is doing. Each command can likewise be expanded so you can see what settings were used for that command.

To the left of the arrow, you will see two other small icons. One, a check mark, controls whether or not that step will be performed. So what? Well, suppose you have created an action that does almost exactly what you want. For example, you have an action that fills text with a color, applies a filter and then strokes the outline. This time only, you want to create the same effect without the stroke. Clear the check mark and run the action... voila! No stroke. The second icon is blank by default, but if you click on it, a tiny picture of a window with an ellipsis (...) appears. In this state, the affected step will bring up a dialog box rather than performing the step without input from you. Let's go back to that button example I just used. Say that this time instead of filling with the foreground color, you want to fill with a pattern. Click to turn on the dialog box, run the action and you get the chance to change "foreground" to "pattern." Last, but not least, you can permanently change a step in a recorded action by double-clicking on it. If the action would normally involve a dialog box, the box will appear and you can change the values, click OK and the new step will take the place of the old one.

You can duplicate an action or a step from an existing action by dragging and dropping it on the new action icon. You can also re-arrange the steps in an action or move steps from one action to another by dragging. Steps or actions can be deleted by dropping them on the garbage can icon. Load new actions you download from the Internet by clicking on the arrow right above the scroll bar. This opens a menu with several options on it, including load and save.

That should be enough to get you started working with actions. If you have questions, feel free to ask. Remember, there is no such thing as a stupid question! Of course the most important thing for you to do now is play around! Create some actions, download and try some of the actions available on the Internet, and experiment, experiment, experiment! The worst thing that can happen is that you'll create a stupid action. You can always delete it and start again. Just make sure that when you want to play with a working action, you make a copy of it first and work on the copy. Have fun with actions and, if you come up with something neat, let me know.