What Are Actions and Why Should You Use Them?
Lesson 2 from: Incorporating Actions into your Portrait WorkflowKristina Sherk
What Are Actions and Why Should You Use Them?
Lesson 2 from: Incorporating Actions into your Portrait WorkflowKristina Sherk
Lesson Info
2. What Are Actions and Why Should You Use Them?
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
What Are Actions and Why Should You Use Them?
Let's talk about our workspace. There are a couple windows that I think are pretty important when you are doing when you're doing when you're creating actions. So the first, the first pallet that I want you guys to have open, is going to be your actions palette right here, and the way you can bring that up is going to be through the window menu and then just choosing actions. If it has a check mark check box next, check mark next to it. You know that it's currently visible. Excuse me, and then if it doesn't have a check mark mark next to it, that's when you know that you're going to need to click on that to make sure it's visible. But for today's class, because we're going to be doing so much work in our actions window, I'm just gonna click and drag this out and hover it along this side because I want to make sure that I have a lot of space here for my actions, for my actions palette right there. The other window that's really, really important is going to be your properties window rig...
ht here. Um, techniques Zoom in for that properties window right there. Okay, um, so those are gonna be the two things that I think are probably most important whenever you are creating an action. Um, and so let's get into a little bit about what is an action. Um, it's a recorded Siris of steps that you can teach Photoshopped to do automatically for you. And I like to think of it as a small helper robot that you can teach easy tasks to dio. Um e does anybody When, Whenever I'm thinking about like, if something would translate well to become an action I like to think about, you know, does this task need the human eye or or brain to dio? So do I need, like, human thinking to actually do this? Or is this something that I'm just mundanely clicking? Okay, those Monday in tasks you don't need to be spending your time doing that kind of stuff. You should be spending your time doing the stuff that requires the human eye and the human brain to dio. So a lot of the the the layer creation a lot of doing this or that, like creating those layers. It really shouldn't be done by you because it's something that can be done by the program itself. All right, so we all on the same page, moving on. So let's talk a little bit about why you should use actions. So incorporating actions into your workflow can make your retouching so much quicker, right? Because you're not sitting there doing all of those steps. So, for example, let me just show you a little bit of ah example. We've got this shark shark pixel portrait in a pinch action here that I will definitely touch on a lot more later. But I just want you guys to look at all of the different steps that I have that are inside this action. Okay? You know, I've never counted these, but I probably should count them at some point. Um, it you know, it just keeps going and going and going, guys. So this is all the stuff that if there's one person that raises their hand When I asked this question, um, like, would anybody want to do this? All of these steps, time and time and time again on every single image that they retouch? No. Right. So a photo shop has the ability to do all of these things for you, Like, let it do them for you, right? Because I don't want to do it. I'm I'm very lazy when it comes to photo shop sometimes. And so none of this stuff is stuff that I want to do. So those are all the little mundane tasks that I don't need to actually be there physically doing, creating those layers, things like that. So actions allow you to speed up your workflow and do things faster with, um, with less time and less work from you, which is basically just reiteration of what I just said. So another application. Has this ever happened? Anybody? You, um, you are sitting there and you're retouching and image. You're so excited out this image that you shot and your retouching retouching retouching. And then you look up at the clock and third, and like, two hours have gone by and you're like what? That just happened. Okay, Yeah. You get in that zone and I call it like the rabbit hole of retouching. Right. So another really nice application for actions is that it keeps you on task because if you create an action that gives you almost an outline of what you need to hit in that image. And then once you've done that, you're done and you move on. You get to move on to the next image. That's something that's going to be huge time saver for you. You know, I need to get rid of blemishes. I need to get where flyaways I need to fix eye color. I like I whites do the skin smoothing, you know, add a little bit of blush if I need Teoh. Once all of those things were done, I'm out. I'm onto the next shot. So having that outline, it's not really an outline. All it is is layers in your layers palette, Right? But having that outline there is going to keep you productive, OK? And the more productive you are, the more money you make per hour that you're actually working. Okay, because that's a very easy way to lose. Money is if you end up, you know, you've got the shoot for four hours, and then you spend another four hours retouching these clients images. You know, that's something that's going to abstentia ble cut your hourly rate in half and Nobody wants to do that right. You want to actually be, like making money as a photographer? Her? That should be the goal, Right? Okay. And so has has anybody. If you do something more than five times, you should create an action for it. So has anybody whitened teeth on more than five images? Yeah. Then you should all have an action for whitening teeth. OK, so that's gonna be the first action we're gonna make today.
Class Materials
Bonus Materials with RSVP
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.