Hello. I'm somewhat new to photography, bought my first dSLR less than 2 years ago and ever since i've been exploring and learning from lots of forums and practical experience.
One thing i never got my head around is actions, photoshop actions.
I've downloaded some free samples of ready made color and toning processing but i don't know how to use them.
so my questions are: How do actions work?
How can i use an action.
How can i save an action.
Actions are simple macros, a saved and reusable list of steps.
You open the actions palette, press "record", and then do the steps you want. Press "stop" to cease recording. Now, if you press "play" it will repeat those exact steps again at any time. You can rename actions too, and (usefully) put your actions into a separate "action set" (like a folder) to make them easier to access.
There are some dialog boxes, like unsharp mask, where you'd want different settings every time you run the action. Look at the steps in the action and you'll notice two boxes to the left of each step. The first is a simple checkbox, usually checked. The second is usually blank; but if you activate it for a dialog box step, then it will stop and ask you for the values you want.
Not much of a science to using simple actions, but they can become extremely powerful. Play around with them, and search the Internet for simple tutorials on them. You'll like what they can do for you.
Not much to add to Rodolfo's excellent explanation.
Create a temp folder on your hard disk and put some test images in it, assume they are all cropped and ready for final processing. You basically have 2 choices as far as actions go, in Bridge you can apply the actions to all or selected files, and/or you can combine actions as part of the image processor tool, both of these I find very very useful.
Don't be afraid to play about with them, start with single action actions, like sharpen, or increase colour saturation, then start to grow the actions and pretty soon you will have a whole long list of them like I do!
If you want to create an action in Photoshop, first create a new Set, then a new Action in that set, before hitting the Record button. If you run your cursor over the icons at the bottom of the palette, you'll see icons for 'New Set' and 'New Action' as well as Record and Stop Recording.
Create and name a new set, and then the action (can be same name). Then hit record and run through the operations you want in the action. Use common sense-- include only automatic-type operations, not painting or custom edits. An action that saves a copy of a 16-bit, prophoto color space, 480dpi Photoshop image as a smaller 8-bit, sRGB, 300dpi jpeg at '8' quality is a suitable type of action- all the operations– mode change, color-space change, size and resolution reductions, and format change– are cut and dried.
After you 'Stop Recording' and save, and quit and reopen Photoshop, you can apply the action to a folder of images by going to the File-Batch command and specifying the source folder and the target folder for the saved images. If you want the new images in a separate folder, create one before invoking the action.
Actions help you automate part of your post processing. Actions can be quite complex and interactive. You can not use logic in actions. However Actions can record the use of a Photoshop script. Photoshop scripts unlike action are hard to create you need to code these using one of three scripting languages. If you want the to work cross platform it come down to javascript. Simple scripts are available for downloading from various web sites. Often your able to find one the almost does what you want to do you might be able to hack it and bend it into what you need.
Actions can also record the use of some plug-ins. Plug-ins need to coded with routines to enable them to be used in actions. All plug-ins can not be used in actions.
Also Actions can not record everything you can do in Photoshop like brush strokes can not be recorded. Some menu Items that can not be recorded in an action can be inserted into an action. Also stop messages can be inserted into action to help instruct you how to used the action. The Action pallet is a full blown editor. Action, Step and sequences of steps cam be moved copied deleted etc. There good practices to use when recording an action. In the beginning just play it easy to play and record action. You going to find out you have created actions the work on some images and not others. At this point you will start to learn the importances of using good practices to avoid building actions that have dependences built in.
