Best Practices with Actions
Lesson 3 from: Incorporating Actions into your Portrait WorkflowKristina Sherk
Best Practices with Actions
Lesson 3 from: Incorporating Actions into your Portrait WorkflowKristina Sherk
Lessons
Class Introduction
04:52 2What Are Actions and Why Should You Use Them?
06:22 3Best Practices with Actions
07:33 4Creating the Teeth Whitening Action
24:02 5Create a Toned-Down Highlight Action
12:04 6Create a Customizable Action
11:47 7Demonstrating the Portrait in a Pinch Action
06:24Lesson Info
Best Practices with Actions
Do you want to talk about some of the best practices that are important when you are creating actions? So So I'll get started on that. So, um, we've got our image right here. Let's just for this explanation. I've just added an additional new layer by hitting the new layer icon at the bottom of my layers palette. Oh, if you see this bar come up while I'm demonstrating, I use a lot of keyboard shortcuts. And so I want to make sure that you can always see what what's going on on the keyboard as well. Okay, so I'm just gonna hit be for my brush tool, and then any free hand movements like this. And this is on layers or on masks of layers. Okay, Um, any freehand movement of the of a mask, you know, painting on a mask or painting on an actual layer. Those kinds of things are going to be really tough for an action to record their very unique to this image. And anything that's unique to a single image shouldn't really be included in an action. So I actually tell people this is the one time that...
I tell people not to use the tablet and actually anything that you could do on your track pad or with a mouse that's gonna be something that's going to be better recorded by your action. Okay, let me go ahead and delete that. So again, use your track. Anything that's done on a track pad is going to be easier. No free hand painting, no free hand movements. And that also includes using your lasso tool. Any selections like that that you would make are not going to be recorded by the action. So that kind of stuff is using your human eye and using your human brain to actually do it so that stuff can be done after the fact. All right, um, when in doubt, I want you guys to very specifically like, let's say we've got one layer there and we've got another layer here. I want you to be very precise with what you're clicking whenever you are creating an action, because each one of those click and selections are going to be recorded by the action. And then if you if you, um you know, by accident we're trying to click and drag toe organize layers like that that kind of click and drag action is not recorded very well. That kind of that kind of I don't want to call it an action, cause that's gonna be confusing, but that what's another word for Yeah? Okay, so it should be done. So here's the better way to do, um, to do that So you've got your keyboard, you can select. You can click on layer one, but then, in order to rearrange it, what I'd rather you dio is hold down command or control, plus your bracket keys to rearrange those layers. Like, say, we have these two layers and I want to put these two layers into a group. Let's hit our ad group icon and then we'll click on Layer one and then hold down Commander Control, plus your bracket keys to move layer one into the group. Did you see how lair one indented itself into the group just like that? That's going to be what you're going to want to do when you're creating an action again. Click on your hue, saturation one and my next. My next tip for you guys is gonna be always name your layers. Here I am with layer wanted to use adulation one. So anyway, what I'm doing is I'm rearranging these layers by using that command instead of doing any of this click and drag and hover movement. Because that kind of stuff is not gonna is not gonna end up being recorded into your action. Thus, you're going to have your action, come back at you and say, Hey, excuse me. That's that's not You know, the make command is not accessible at this point or whatever, and then you're gonna be frustrated. My next tip for you guys always name your layers. Okay, um, whenever you are recording in action, what photo shop is kind of doing behind the scenes is it's leaving breadcrumbs for itself and its writing notes to itself. Okay, She created a hue saturation layer, and then she named that layer toned down highlights. Okay, And then once you click on that layer, it allows Photoshopped to remember, Okay, that's what that layers called. It just keeps everything a lot more organized, and you're not gonna end up with layer one layer to layer three and all that kind of stuff, because it the more time you take to correctly create the action on the front end, the better the action is going to be. And the easier is going to be for you to use that action moving forward on the next 10 on the next 15 on the next 20 images that you use it on. So every time you use that action, like even though we're gonna take a lot of time today creating the actions because then all we have to do is click a button once and all of that stuff is done for us. The next time you use it, it's going to be beneficial and then you use it, and then the 100 image that you use it on you could take like, let's say, if we were doing it by hand, this would take 30 seconds. Well, what's 100 times 30? Because that's the time savings that you would have once you've used and inaction on 100 different images that you're working on kind of thing. Okay, so naming layers is important At some points, you're going to want to come up to one of your photo shop layers of Photoshopped menus up here, it the top and something is going to be great out like this when you're trying to create an action, and that is incredibly frustrating. Okay, so this is the only really backwards tip that I would probably suggest you guys write a little bit of a note down if for some reason, one of the menu items is great out up here and I'm going to touch on all of these in real world examples as we move on to when we're creating the action. But I'm just trying to reiterate them a couple of times so that you guys have those best practices. Um, there's a little at the top of your actions palette. There is a little four line little menu fly out menu for actions, so if you click that it's going to allow you to add and menu item. Do you see that ad in certain menu item? So it's really counterintuitive. Instead of going to the menu where you know, for example, and it, Phil, is instead of going there when you're creating inaction, you're actually going to have to come to your menu here and say, insert menu item
Class Materials
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Ratings and Reviews
Amy Vaughn
I was already a regular action user before this class, edited other people's actions and dabbled with creating a few of my own. Somehow, I still wasn't thinking about just how many of those repetitive adjustments I make across images that I could be automating. Kristina's class was great for making me think about how much more I can be doing with actions than I was, and I've already noticed a difference with my editing speed since I started applying her suggestions. This is one of those classes that seemed like a simple lesson at the time, but it's having a huge impact on my daily workflow.