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Conditional Actions

Lesson 21 from: Photoshop and Lightroom Creative Cloud Additions in 2015

Ben Willmore

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Lesson Info

21. Conditional Actions

Lesson Info

Conditional Actions

One thing that's been changed so little while ago is if you end up using actions and I use actions quite a bit because I like to automate as much stuff as I can and rather spend my time out shooting instead of playing with voter shop. I love playing with photo shop, but I muchmore enjoy being in nature and capturing images so let's open the actions panel and let's, look at one thing that was added a little while ago, but I find to be rather useful, and that is let's say, I'm working on action here, I have one, and at some point within that action, I need the action, howsam intelligence, we don't have time to cover the basics of action, so I'm going to only assume this is for people that already used them to say no, but you now have a choice of going in the upper right corner of the actions panel he had. One of the choices is insert conditional. What a conditional is is usually in action just starts at the top in plays until gets to the end and there's no intelligence built into it, but...

if you choose, insert conditional, you can have photoshopped, inspect this document to see if it matches any of these conditions, and so I could say that let's say, if this document is square I should add a red bar on the right side of it until it makes enough space to fill an hd tv so that it doesn't just show it is a square documents centered instead it's got space on the right side of a particular color let's say or I could say if this image is vertical, you know if it's landscape do one thing like at a certain amount of space around it and if it's not instead do something else, it could be that case I'm adding a little credit on the edge of the picture that says copyright, then wilmore you know all rights reserved in on my landscape images I wanted down the left side of the picture, but on my vertical images I don't want it down the left side I wanted at the bottom and so here I could say if it's landscape play one particular action and if it's not landscape play a different action so it's a way to have it kind of branch in deviate you'll find that not too many actions are listed in this menu because they have to be in the same folder s so you have to as long as they're sitting in the same folder they'll be in the list other things that could be useful when you're making actions is just thinking about what can break or make your action not work in general let's say you have an action that tints of photograph eso it looks brownish when you like that? Well, you might go in here and have one of the steps in your actions say, hey, if the mode is gray scale on this picture, go play in action that converts it to color, because then something that adds color to it wouldn't work. If it's sitting in grayscale mode, the features needed, dad color just wouldn't be available, or they're certain filters that are not available and seeing why came out, they're just great out from the menu, so your action requires one of those filters. You might have it checked to see if that documents and seeing white came out, and if it is, go, have it apply in action that converts it toe rgb, where that filter would be available, all sorts of different choices in here. But I just want to make sure you're aware of how that worked, and know that if the whatever you set up here is true, then it will play the first action, and if it's false, it would play the second action. If you don't need it toe, go to a different action, just set this to none, and then when it's done playing, the action is listed, it would just continue on within the action this is used in but those air conditional steps in your action you created by first having inaction existing already, you click within your action wherever you want it to check what's up with your document. You go to the upper right corner of the actions panel and that's where you choose the choice of insert conditional? Yes. Then what are the red check marks on those actions? All right, you're wondering about these check marks here. If I go and drill down into an action, a red check mark means that when you have an action, if you expand it here's one called the ben ski wrap. A ben ski wrapped as a canvas rap reflects the image on the side. So khun commend around. Well, if I expand in action, you notice that each step within inaction has a cheque parks to left of it in the check box means it should apply this particular step when you apply that action. And if I scroll down in this particular action, do you notice how there's one spot that has that checkbox turned off and that's something called a stop in that one happened to have a copyright notice in it. So I could include a copyright in my action, it doesn't actually change the and result of the action and just makes it so somebody else copies this action and claims it to be their own. And they're stupid enough to leave that step in it. I can prove it copied it from me because my copyright is right in it. Um, but that little check box means that not all of the steps within this action are active there. Little not all the check boxes are on. Got it. Thank you. Sure. Uh, also this little square if you're wondering, uh, if you see this symbol in it, it means this action will prompt use for some input, like a dialog box will appear asking you for settings. Where is this one will not if you want to learn more about actions. One of my classes in my photo shop mastery siri's, I think covered actions that might have been on automation class or something like that, but they're very useful. All right, I think we're done with the tiny features. Now, let's, look at some larger features that we have yet to have time to get into before I get into other is there any other questions? Well, we actually have one question come up while you're on this image, j pong grass says, hey, been great class. How would you go about removing the rope in the canoe photo? I don't know if you can demonstrate any of the features by trying to remove that rope he was curious about that all right you don't like the road like the rope I don't know all right well if you don't like the rope we have a couple different options the first two that come to mind is the spot healing brush with the spot healing brush she would want to brush the tiniest bit um thicker than the rope and you would want to paint from the point where one rope touches the edge of something to the point where that robe disappears meaning you want to get all of one segment once you get there you can let go and it would attempt to remove the wrote then you go to the next section and you would do the same thing um you could also instead make a selection of this area go to the edit menu and there's a choice called content aware and it would do something similar I would do that first to try to eliminate as much of the rope as is practical with the simplest of retouching tools mean the tool that makes me do the least work and then I would go back and be critical of the end result and I would use tools that make me do more work on lee where this tool messed up and so if I were to do something like that here I can see where it messed up in a few spots I usually give these tools three strikes and they're out which means wherever it messed up I'll give it another try now give it on ly three tries and if it messes up three different attempts then I'll try to go to a different tool but you can see how that's doing a pretty good job and most of these areas and if that didn't work if you just totally messed up on different areas I'd have to switch to something that's a little bit more manual and often times breaking up a retouching task into multiple chunks where I fix it on lee where it bumps into the edges of things I create a little gap at the end and that I'd break it apart in the middle to just make it so I don't have to try to fix the entire length of the rope in one um application of it it can also help fix this this is the one I'd be most concerned about because it's where if it was a little bit off in the content it might be obvious and so there I might be able to do more might have to do more work or it might do ok three strikes write their own did good by the third strike um but does not give you the idea now here, I'm not seeing the end, so I won't get it right. So there we got a good amount of the rope.

Class Materials

Bonus with Purchase

Ben Willmore - Class Handbook.pdf
Ben Willlmore - LayerComps Example.tif
Ben Willmore - Lightroon Dehaze Preset Pack.zip
Ben Willmore - DeHaze Preset Pack Quick Start Guide.pdf

Ratings and Reviews

TimK
 

Got to "know" Ben during Photoshop Week and a few other courses. He has consistently been one of my favorite Photoshop instructors. He is extremely easy to follow, stays on point without being cold or boring, and is immensely knowledgeable on just about everything Photoshop. He does not disappoint in this fantastic in-depth review of some great new features in PhotoShop and Lightroom CC 2015 ... there are some real hidden gems in there for you. Ben polishes them up and serves them to you with extra info, insight, and pertinent examples. He goes the extra mile to answer questions and delve into related subjects without going off the rails. GREAT, GREAT course. Thanks Ben, and Creative Live! -Tim K.

Jose A De Leon
 

I just purchased this course today and it's wonderful. Ben is one of the best Photoshop instructors I've encountered. I had purchased the complete Mastery course and this one is a welcome addition since it covers new features. Even though Photoshop and Lightroom will continue to evolve, the basic techniques and tools used are basically the same, so I find myself going back to the mastery course if I hit a bump along the way. Ben's knowledge is second to none, but his true gift is the ability to transmit all that knowledge in bite size and understandable portions that are never boring. Someday I will have the privilege to know him personally, in the meantime I will continue to buy his courses as they come out. Such a wealth of information. Thanks Ben and CreativeLive!

Larry
 

Ben is a wealth of knowledge and covers the material beautifully. Highly recommend his workshops to others!

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