Can someone shed some light on how to use Actions?

[TnOiOnL]

I'm trying to land a job at a studio where Actions are always used. I've never used them and am trying to play around with some of the default actions I have on my PS, but am not really getting very far. I keep searching for an answer and am not getting very far.

Any insight on this or a link to a tutorial

Many thanks!

[KevQ]

The best way to learn about actions is to play around with creating them. Almost anything you can do in Photoshop can be recorded in an action, except for specific brush strokes. Get yourself a group of images to use as tests then begin recording an action with the types of things you might be regularly using like image size, cropping, filters, curves or levels...

Once you have recorded it, run it on your group of images and be sure to save the changed images to a new folder. This is the best way to get a feeling for how they work.

It is important to be aware that some specific actions require the group of images to be identical in size to work correctly, cropping for example, or some filters that offer options on their degree of effectiveness. Other actions do not care about image size like curves or levels.

Once you have figured that out, you can begin playing with inserting stops or pauses into your actions. These allow the action to pause while you perform a manual operation to the image, a brush stroke for example or a unique crop, and then allows the action to restart again when you are done.

One more advanced feature is the dialog icon on the side of each action that brings up the dialog box of the action being performed as the action is running, allowing you to input specific information that relates to that specific image. For example, if you have images of varying sizes, and your action includes a resize action, you can have the image size dialog box pop up in each image and change the parameters manually.

As for tutorials, I would just do a Google search of "photoshop action tutorial"

Good Luck!

[palms1]

Here is a tutorial for you from our own Danny Raphael
photoshop actions The mother of all tutorials
http://www.atncentral.com/tutorials.htm

Palms

[DannyRaphael]

Originally Posted by TnOiOnL

I'm trying to land a job at a studio where Actions are always used. I've never used them and am trying to play around with some of the default actions I have on my Photoshop, but am not really getting very far. I keep searching for an answer and am not getting very far.

Any insight on this or a link to a tutorial

Many thanks!

===============

KevQ provided some good advice. To expand on that here's my .02.

Most likely the job will require playing actions, not building them, so I wouldn't worry too much at this point about learning the ins/out of recording actions. Give it a go for awareness purposes, though.

Playing vs. recording actions is like driving a taxi. Important to know how to drive, rules of the road/laws, and do basic things like put in gas, where to put oil, etc.; not necessary to know how to build a car.

Get familiar with:
* Actions palette
. * show/hide with F9
. * Commands on the Actions palette menu
. * Controls at bottom of palette
* Difference between action and action set (folder)
* How to Save an action set (Save actions...)
* How to Load an action set (Load actions...)
* Difference between Button Mode and Edit Mode
* How to play an action in Button Mode and Edit Mode

------------

Highly recommend:
* Go to: www.atncentral.com
* Find / download / read intro sections of "The Mother of All Actions Tutorial"

Ask more questions here if you need further advice. Good luck on the interview.

[TnOiOnL]

Many many thanks! This is like a new language to me... I've neverrrrr once touched on actions and they use them heavily. I have NO professional retouching experience so I'm trying to research as much as possible, QUICK!
thanks for the link!!

[Markzebra]

Yes actions can be the key to efficiency. Although most people didn't seem to be aware of it, its been possible since Photoshop 4 to create key commands for any repeated steps, and customiseable shortcuts have been available since then too through actions. Although perhaps this doesn't sound like much on the face of it, it can make a huge difference to your working standards and technique overall