Lessons

Lesson Info

The Role of Actions

the next thing I want toe touch on a little bit is the role of actions in all this stuff we're doing. Actions are a wonderful part of photo shop where you can automate different processes to say I want this thing to happen automatically. And the good part about actions is they can automate your work from beginning to end. In this particular case, I don't necessarily want to do that all the time. Or if I do, I want to make sure my actions that the result of my actions still give me the chance to try things. So, for example, I might create an action that says, once I brought in a texture layer Do these 10 things to that texture. But I want to do those 10 things so that at the end result, I'd have layers with options so I wouldn't be stuck. Now, having said all that towards the end of Ah, today, we're talking about some painterly kind of effects, and I record an action that doesn't, I think, a pretty decent job of turning your photo into a painting and still preserves most able to edit. B...

ut it's not as much as as you might want to, just by the way that technique has to work. But so if I wanted to give myself options, what I might do is record in action where the result is put several different adjustment layers on. So, for example, maybe I want to just simply look at different ways to convert to black and white. So there's a number of different ways we can make black and white adjustments. So let's first of all, spend a moment or two talking about actions in general for those people that are still kind of new to the whole thing of actors. I want to touch on this briefly, and then we'll talk about how I would incorporate actions in this kind of world of finishing touches and experimentation. So if you're new to actions, the best thing can do to start office. Make sure you organize yourself by using what Adobe Call sets another name for a folder. Because if you just have actors all over the place, eventually it becomes hard toe. Understand what's happening. So I want to make a new action inside this one. I have already set up called black and White options and it's inside this set, I could allocate a function key shortcut if I want. I'm not going to bother in this case and I click record. But before I do that that they pass along a very important tip that if you have never created action before, this is one of the first things that usually throws people off. I have taught a lot of in person classes all over the place, and I often go to groups, and I'll often ask them and say, How did people here create actions of their own? And usually it's. About 10 to 20% of people put their hand on my what size the group is they a small spattering of people create their own actions. And then I ask, How did people have never heard of actions? And it's an equally small number, which tells me lots of people know what actions are. But a small percentage actually used them, and I think there's a couple of reasons for that that all talk about in a second. So I started asking people and say, Why is it then if you know what actions are, why don't you use them and one of the common responses was, Well, I thought I needed to automate the entire process from A to Z. So since I couldn't, I didn't bother. And my thinking is, if you can automate half, that's still better than nothing. So for me, one of the philosophies of actions is if I can automate part of it and get me closer than result, that's better than the alternative meat. Every time repeating the same steps just to get there, the other common questions are answered. The people said. It's why don't use actions. They just don't really know what they are, which is valid. You cannot use actions. We don't what they are. But the third very common response that I found people would say is I tried actions once, but I had a bad action experience. Everything went horribly wrong, and I was like, You will never do that again because it was bad. And there's a lot of Gutches about actions, and the 1st 1 is with very few exceptions, I need to have a document open before you start recording, because one of things that happens almost everyone the first time is a start recording, then they open a document to start working on. Well, that just means you've recorded action. Every time you play it, it will open that specific file. And unless you want that to happen, the chances are you don't you want to say No matter what document I'm using? I want to run this action to that document. So by the same token, look in my layers panel. That layer is called Layer zero because it's a smart object. If someone else had record in action for me, and at the first step, it said, click on the layer called Background, then on this document it wouldn't work. So there's a few little Gutches like that. The actions are very, very specific, so it'll do exactly what you tell it. So I want to make sure my document is already open and this layer is already active because that way, I'm not recording open the file or click on a layer called whatever. That just means now record access, whatever layer I'm on now start and for this particular one that's going to make a better and result. So now I'm gonna hit the record button and start recording and the second thing, I'll say to people who are brand new to actions and that maybe I'm the only person the world that ever thought this. I'm guessing that's not the case, But I'm embarrassed to say the first time I recorded action. For some reason, I thought it was recording how long I was taking, so I was trying to things really quickly trying to make sure I could, You know, that's got nothing to do with it. It's not recording how long you take. It's recording what steps you do so you can relax and take your time and say, What do I want to do? Well, I want to First of all, add a black and white adjustment layer and we'll just keep the properties way they are, and then I'm gonna hide it. I'm gonna add a radiant map, which another way of making a black and white and then hide that ad a hue saturation adjustment layer. Take out the saturation, changed the lightness a little bit and then hide that and come back here and stop recording. So now we revert this document to the beginning. All I've really done is saved myself a little bit of time because now every time I want experiment with black and white options instead of going on to add those three adjustment lairs. Now I just go to my action and say, Click hit the play button. Now my photograph looks exactly the same because remember, as I record, I hit each one, and the reason for doing that is now I can look and say, Oh, I like that one or this one or that not definitely not that one And each photo and there's I only did three. You could probably do about four other ways to potentially make a black and white looking image or have several black and white adjustments with different settings in it and then decide on a case by case basis. So this is an example of what I mean by saying I'm creating an action that's not a dizzy to say, Do the whole thing and make a decision for me. I'm saying, make my life simpler by adding something I want to play with. So this could be I could make an action that adds five different adjustment layers, how I could make another one that says Add those five adjustments and place in a texture I think I might want and leave it as is. And then that just means zip, zip, zip. It's done. Now. I can start experimenting of turning this on entering that all. Okay, so that's where I would consider kind of. The role of actions in this whole thing is finding ways to make our life simpler by getting as much of it done as possible, the other possibility of actions. And this is kind of an interesting one, because almost everyone I talked to when they picture actions, they think multi step, multiple procedure kind of thing, which is very true. But there's another possibility is there's a number of things in Photoshop. Get something on here so we can talking about I just want to get something on a layer. But there are things, for example, like rotate 90 degrees counterclockwise. That's something I do fairly often, and every time you do it, have to go image, uh, rotate nine degrees counterclockwise. Not a big deal, but that's like click click to get over there. So on one occasion I was doing something in photos time, I thought that's like the umpteenth time that I've gone back to that exact same simple little thing. But it still took me digging down to get it on. A little light bulb went off. I thought, Who says that? Actions have to be multi steps, but there's just one step, but it's still quicker than me going. Image Rotate. Okay, so this is another option is to go in and make almost to a quick little set here and make an action that just goes like this. Rotate counter clockwise record. Then just go Image rotate counterclockwise Course, we're told the whole image, not the layer, but that's OK and then stop recording. So now all that action does is that one thing. Once you do that, you start thinking Well, there's other things like that that, like, make smart object right now, every time making a smart object, I'm having to right click and choose. Make smart object or fine, adding a drop shot of particular style every time I have to go pop up. Drop shadow. So I started thinking there's a lot of things that I do all the time. Photoshopped it really only one single operation, but it takes a bit of effort to get to them, for example, adding a black stroke around the outside. I do that quite often. So every time I've been I have been going fax stroke, make sure it's black. Okay, it is. I wanted to be inside, and three are two or whatever it is. Click OK, but every time I was doing that, so one day I took no, not even an hour, 40 minutes and just started thinking about what are some of the things that I do all the time in Photoshop, and I recorded a whole series of these little one step action operations and there put them all in one folder called One step. There they are there. There's a whole bunch of them now. I could have given keyboard shortcuts all of these, I suppose. But one of the little things that you can do in the actions panel, which I think is kind of cool, especially if you have a nice big monitor you can put your actions panel on the side somewhere is the access panel has a display mode called button mode, and now all these things become clickable effects of I go rotate 10 degrees. Flip it horizontal. Let's rotate it this way a couple times. All I'm doing is clicking on the buttons, saying at a black stroke, and uh, maybe add a layer mask. And so individual things which are all over the place in photo soft. Now I kind of gathered them all into one spot, and they become quite literally one click actions. So once they have them in there and you might, you know, create this list that you keep adding to question. Always add more actions over time as you go. But you start out with a few and then you, Like I said, the East wages going to button mode because then you just be h time you click. It's doing that effect and a simple thing like, you know, rotate or click. That's usually at least one or two things you have to do either right click and pine it or go to a menu and pull it down. So find things that you do Ah, lot of the time in photo shop, and I think, Well, how can I make that process simpler to record a whole series of these one step actions? They're built into Photoshopped, so you don't have to worry about on now. I'm in a different document. They're built into Photoshopped and they're always there. You can play with the order. You can edit them. I tend to use but mo, just because it's faster, he could have had a lot of function key shortcuts you use. You could allocate keyboard shortcuts of those as well. But if you start thinking about things that you do on a regular basis, I think this is a very valuable way of thinking about actions that's different than many actions. Like Wait, I can turn your text into a candy cane. You're like Who? Awesome. But you know, first of all, who wants that? But secondly, it's like 28 steps or even more. I download in action a day just to look at it. And to me, the whole point of inaction is it goes really fast, and I'm sitting there going, looking, going Why is nothing happening? And it did so many steps. So I was curious. If you download an action, if you can get actions from various places, including a lot that are free on the base best ways to learn about inaction is download one and then you can temporarily keyword There temporarily changed the playback options to say slow down so that way as its happy instead of going and having someone resulting I don't know what happened, you can watch it go. Oh, they duplicated and then they flatten. You can sort of see what happened. I was watching this action that I downloaded and whoever recorded it just recorded like stuff. And even when he made a mistake, so I actually watching it said Duplicate, undo. I was like, interesting concept. You go back and edit. He just left all that in there. So it took quite a long time to actually write the effect was kind of interesting, but it was very He had a lot of merging of layers stuff, So I really didn't get the ability to the end, go in and edit it in any way. So I prefer to say, if I'm going to do this, I want to create actions that's gonna allow me to see what's happening and do very fast and speed up my work and end up with a very non destructive and result now for those people out there that are wondering because someone always does. When you have a whole series of actions to do things, the answer is yes. You can record an action that plays other actions. So if you have 20 little one step actions, you could then record in action that says, First rotate, then do this. And it'll create an action that plays a subset of actions, which is a little mind boggling but still cool at the same time. So I just wanted very quickly, kind of touch on his actions is a whole another topic. I will say this that if you decide to download actions from somewhere a couple little tips for you because anyone who has Photoshopped can record in action and then say Here you go, here's an action So we're kind of making some assumptions here that that person either knows what they're doing or doesn't do something really wacky that makes thing happen or it goes amiss. So if he ever try running an action and one of the unfortunate parts of actions is the error, messages are not very helpful. Sometimes you're on action and it won't say your documents in the wrong mode. It'll say Step is not available. Okay? Here, like it's not available. What does that mean exactly? So a little tip for you If you ever download in action and you can see, like look at this one right here. See the name of the action says Vignette. And then in brackets that says the word selection. That's the action way of saying first, make a So in this case for this action toe work, you have to make a selection first. If you don't have a selection, it's not gonna run properly. So that's become kind of the accepted way of naming your action is to put in brackets, see how like these couples say type. That means make a type player. Now you can run the action. Okay, So anyone that says like this one, you have to have a separate layer. So any time you see something in brackets that is telling you do that first before you start running some of them. When you look at the action, this one doesn't have it. Some of them will actually start up. When you were on the action, The first thing that happens is a dialog box opens up and says, Before you run this action, you do the following. That's what the people that are really good at making actions. Of course, a lot of people just don't say that and it just doesn't work. You have no idea why. They say, Oh, you have to be in cm White came out seriously, thank you very much. You know, you could have told me that. So if you decide that you're going to record an action that has a few steps in it, and there is a possibility that you might not use it for a long time and forget or you want to share it with a colleague that you might want toe use that four. Then here's one of the ways you could make everyone's life a little easier. Let's say that I was gonna want to do a sharpening effect on this photograph. Well, there's a technique that to do. Scharping involved switching to this mode called L A B Mode and then applying the filter and coming back again so it takes a few steps, so that might be a good candidate for making an action. So let's do L a b sharpen and start recording. So the way this method works is we change the mode of our document to L. A B color, and they go to the Channels panel and click on the Lightness Channel. So in my action so far, saying, Convert mode, select likeness channel, then I sharpen this information. And, as aside, the reason that doing this is because when you do sharpening, if you have to sharpen a whole lot, sometimes introduces little halos of color. If you sharp on on Lee, the lightness information in effect, it's like saying I'm only sharpening the grayscale information so you'll have less chance of color. Hey, lowing. So we talked later on about Scharping and more detail. There's 20 different ways of sharpening. This is a way that I use enough times here and there that it made sense for me to create, actually do a lot of work for me. So the next step I choose sharpen and let's say I want to do smart sharpen. Well, here's the first challenge we face when we're recording in action. How do you record a filter? Because every photo might be slightly different. So there's a couple of choices here. The 1st 1 is enter in some numbers that you think are pretty decent average that you use on a regular basis for sharpening because of, for example, I'm sharpening to go to my particular printer or my website, or whatever it might be now, I would never actually used these numbers. But I want to make sure when I run this action and actually see something happening, so I'm gonna really overdo it. Don't ever use numbers like this. This is way too much sharpening. I want to make sure that when I run it, you can actually see that something is happening. So that's option number one is Pick some numbers. The other option is just click OK or whatever it says. We'll explain the differences there. So in this case, I'm gonna go with that click, OK, and then change the mode back to RGB color and then stop recording. So now I have an action that will do those steps for me. So if I revert this and then run my action, you'll see one of the benefits that it goes really quickly in this dump. Okay, so that's cool. However, not every photograph, I might want exactly the same amount of sharpening. So if we look in here on your court action every step, it's going to say, Well, you said convert Moto L. A. B. Then you said look like a channel. Then you told me. Smart sharpened, using these numbers. So one of the options weaken dio usual empty box, just the left here. If you click on that, that's called a motile control. It's also I refer to as an interrupt switch. So now when I run this action, I guess at this point says, How much would you like to sharpen? So now it's a semi automatic action instead of being completely end to, and it gets me to that point how much like to sharpen and I say even more, don't really. But now, then I click OK, and then it continues. So that's a very nice way of creating an action that's doing most of the work for you. But then it's still pausing at the appropriate place. So if you are trying to experiment, I over sharp in this to make a point, but actually is an interesting effect that I might try blending into something else. So any time you have an action that has settings in it, whether it's an adjustment layer or a filter or anything, where there's values, you'll see. That's why all these box empty boxes air there. This will stay on until I turned off again. So that means every time I run this action from now on, it's going to pause and say, How much would you like to sharp? Now imagine that I was going to give this to one of my colleagues who was not as familiar with Photoshopped. If it's suddenly paused at a dialog box, he might not be 100% sure what's happening or what he's supposed to do. So one of the kind of cool things about actions you can even do for your own use, but it's particularly useful when you're sharing with someone else's after you've recorded the action. When I click on this staff and from the pop up menu, choose, insert, stop and say something like Next, not nest. Next, you should enter the values for sharpening on our bolting. Okay, so actually be always clicking the wrong place and be up there. So now it's more with the revert. Now, if I run this action, it comes up and says next time you should. OK, now, when I record that I made one little mistake because I want to allow it to say allow continue. So I want to have happen. Is when they run this action They'll read that and go. OK, now I understand. Continue. So then when this pops up there, not like what just happened there? Okay, so inserting a stop is a way that you can give instructions. So some actions I've downloaded are really good because it says make now you'll be asked to do this, whatever it ISS. So you kind of understand why it's pausing him, asking you to interact. The only down side of this, which I'll cover in a second, is I don't want to do this. If I have 200 photographs like I'm trying to a batch, I don't want to interrupt every single one. So that's a separate issue. This is good for on a case by case basis. I want to run this action and decide for this photo. I'd like to use thes settings question. So once you understand that every time you end in action, how do you try to stop off? It's just anything that's in the actions panel you see along with this little box. There's also a check mark. The check mark means Don't do it anymore. Don't do this. Stop. Don't do the stop. Or if you're just 100% convinced, then you just take and say, You know what? I don't want that at all anymore and just deleted out there completely. So ending in action can be another nice way of doing something. Wester Red Check Mark. The reject check mark means that in this particular action, some steps are unchecked, but others are available, so a red one means it's kind of a mixture of It's like if you had those motile controls had some turned on, and some not would get that little indication. That just means you have a combination. So what about the scenario where I've got 100 of these photos and I want to sharpen them all the same because they're all from the same shoot, so I don't need to edit each one differently, But it's not this number. It's not what it currently is. So I don't want to stop. Every time you use a batch action, the whole point of a batch Action should be automatically open every photograph, apply the action, save it so I can walk away and have lunch ball. That's happening automatically. So if I had 100 photographs I don't want, stop everyone and say, You know, changing, changing, changing. So the other option and this is really interesting. It's actually probably one of the I would say lesser known things about actions because I've seen people go to a much more calm, convoluted way to do this. Any one of these steps in here like this one. It's a smart sharpen with these settings. If I just double click on it and change it, it allows me to re record it. So now, from now on, those are my new settings. So what I do is I record in action. I don't really care that much about putting in specific numbers for, say, sharpening, because what I do is I'm about to sharpen these 85 photographs I tried. I wanted Okay, so 123.2, whatever the numbers are, then I re record that one step. Then I run the batch acting without any stop or interrupt, because I know I've now re recorded that setting that's appropriate for what I'm about to do next. So when you do that, when you make that adjustment, you're just doing it in your head. You don't see a visual representation, will you actually do? Because as your as your double clicking on it, it actually is going to apply it. Okay, you'll get there. So when you're re recording, you wanna have a document open? That's kind of a dummy document. That doesn't matter, because you're just using it for the purpose of recording that step. So if you have an action that is very close to what you want, Robin, start again. You can also duplicate in action and then reorganise license steps. Or think not. That would make sense in this case, But maybe I wanna do this step before that step. So you almost have to think of the internal part of an action similar to the Layers panel in that I could take this and drag it up here. Now that's not gonna work in this case because it has to be in that order. But if there are things where when you're running like a way, that would be better If I did this first in that second, you can change the order. Said you can turn off steps to say I don't want that at all, you know? And like a recurring theme, a photo shop. It will stay this way until you change it. So until you come back and decide, Okay, Now I want that turn step turned back on or about to share this action with someone else. I'm gonna put that stock back in again, or whatever it is, it's like a lot of things that stays this way. So I have lots of case where I've taken this action say I really like that, but I want to tweak it so I'm gonna instead duplicate it and then in the 2nd 1 makes him change to it called a different name. So that way I know I have l. A be sharpened with this settings and alabi storm with that setting. So that's another approach. Actions are teeny tiny little files to take up no overhead all in voter shop, so I'd rather have four copies of Inaction with different settings that I have labeled appropriately versus one that I'm constantly having to tweak and adjust all the time. We're talking about editing actions, so you have that action. How can you add something else to that action? Good question. So Ah, let's see here. What? Can I do it too? Well, I'll just do it to this one. So let's say after I've convert the mode, then I want to do one more thing like make it a smart object or something like that. So all I have to do is go to that point in the action and then start recording again and then convert to smart object, uh, whatever. So then it just added those steps on there, and you can do that at any at any point. You have to click in the appropriate places. Say I want to pick up from here, goes after so and that's a really good point because there are times where, for example, you record a whole action. You think, oh, find only back there done this extra step, it would make the rest of better If you can just go into that point at it. And when people are responding law time recording actions, that's often what they do is they do a test run. It works pretty well, they think. Oh, instead of recording the whole thing, I really just need to tweak that thing. But one more thing in there, that kind of thing. Homicides recorded in action and then trashed it. It's recording it all again, and that's a very common because it's not an obvious thing to say. You can just alter or add in or take out. I did the same thing when I first started. I made a mistake and I did. Undoing that, I should start again. I realized after I could have kept going is taking out those two steps because I taken out the mistake and the undo that it wouldn't do it anymore. But again, that's not necessarily an obvious thing. If you haven't done that very off, this is how do you do in action? Save as okay. Um, is that after topic? No, that's fine, because for the the idea of doing Bash, I was gonna delete these last couple of steps here. So, for example, in this l. A be sharpened thing. Eventually, I want to be able to tell it that I want to save it in a different format or something like that. So when you record as part of an action, any kind of saver save ask a man it's still gonna record very specifically and say you recorded save under this file name in that folder. So what you can do is still either recorders in the half do. In some case, let's just do it this way. Um, so I'm gonna take these three files right here. I'm Enbridge because I find it easier. And then you'll see there's a commander Photoshopped called Batch. I don't know why does a batch action? Because probably should, but that's what it means. And this means I can say, OK, I want you to go to this one that I did called L A B sharpen. And I want the source to be the images that I've chosen. And I want you to save and put them into a folder. Now. Theoretically, if you recorded a save as command, you could just say save and close. That always makes me worry that if I made a mistake, I might save over the top of my file. So I like to personally pick on after folder, which I often strange enough call after So I know what it is, and that just means apply the action, put it in that other folder. But the problem that can still happen is if you've recorded a step that says Save as JPEG in this other folder, it can still have a problem with file naming. So this little thing right here that says override action save as commands. That means if I have recorded in action that says Save as J. Pay called this in that folder, all it really members is save a JPEG, and it forgets any other issue of Wait, what's the file name and then you just the file naming is set up in here. The styling box has changed slightly in the last couple of versions, but this is the basic principle is, and I will do that. Sometimes you only have one or two documents cause it still gives me, I think, the best control. We're making sure that it's saving appropriately into a different folders. I'm still preserving my original and saving into a different folder now. In this case, I didn't actually record to save as commands, so it's not gonna work appropriate because you have to do that typically. But that's the way I would do it, because it's give me more options this way. The theory is, if you just recorded one that says Save as then it should work, Okay? And on one off sort of thing is gonna pop up every time. This that's the other problem. That's even if you don't properly. And I'm glad you mentioned that because I've had people mention that for years. And it's a quirky, weird thing to me about the batch action. You shouldn't have to click, you know, every time, some button that says this Jay Peak setting whatever but it It does happen sometimes, and it's not doesn't suggest that you've recorded the action and correctly means that's a little quirky thing. And the I've had times arrived. I've run the exact same batch action twice in two days. In the first time, it ran like a dream, and a second time it kept forcing me to click OK every time. So if that ever happens to you, sound like I'm kidding about this, but I'm not. Find something that's relatively heavy and put it on your enter key and then walk away like this is gonna go beep, beep, beep, beep, beep and really drive you crazy. But that way it's gonna click OK for you automatically. I thought I should make, you know, ever seen those little birds that go like this and dip into the water? Remember those things? I want to get one of those that just times it right in the schools. Yes. And clicks. Okay. For me, it was like the batch action bird. So it just sits there and clicks OK for me to sit there and maybe the whole thing. The shop authorized override. Wait. Yeah, I would probably would freak people out there. Somebody put in a glass of water on top of my answer key, but it works. Um, did we have any other questions about the action related part of your things we talked about with objects like, I think we're pretty well covered. There are a lot of these questions. They pop up, you start doing it, you answer the question, they're never mind covered. I think I think you've taught a couple these courses? Um alright, Well, one thing I will mention with since just finalize the conversation of actions. I measure the beginning that I suggest putting an action inside that set or folder. Even there's only one action if you want to share an action with someone. Oddly enough, you can't share an action. You have to share a set so you can only have one action. What? That action inside a set. And then you can share the set. Don't know why. That's just the way it works. So, for example, we're gonna look later on in the next section about this actually created to start off to be a painting. I'm going to share that with Everyone would have to put that inside a separate set. Call it Daves paint gizmo. I didn't do a set. I met Did the actions. All right again. So we put that inside that set. Now, I could go to this and choose save actions. Now, if I tried just clicking on here and picking save action, see, has great out, which is really weird to me. All I want to do is say that one thing but you have to put it inside a set. So this is how you share actions is you save it. It's gonna call a 10.80 n because that's the name of the be extension for action files that are a cross platform. Doesn't matter Mac or PC and should be pretty much across versions of Photoshopped as well. Actions, however, are kind of like a preset, but you don't find them in the preset manager. So if there's anything about this actions panel that you want to share with someone or import other ones in there, the preset manager doesn't help you because that's all these other types of presets. What you'd have to do is go to this other area and choose import export you see and hear. Now it remembers actions as well. This is how you can export are important actions into your set. If I remember right when you were making brushes, you thought it was a good idea to save your brushes. Someone in case something happened, I myself waited. Save your actions somewhere. Yeah. What you have do is just do this one export actions and then export them into a folder somewhere so that would make your you need to do it that way or and out. I would do if I had a number of them. But I just want to create a backup of just this. I would again shoes, save actions. And instead of putting him in the folder, it's telling me, Put them in some backup folder of my own again. It's one of those things I'd like to say. Theoretically, there should be no reason to have to do that because you should not lose any of these things. But experience has said that that happens on and off enough that I just don't want to worry about it. I'm going to create a backup of all any of my presets in action, just in case, because I don't want to do them again.