In my first t3 post I going to explain about ACTIONS in PS. Yes its really weird that not many people have heard about or used it. I learnt about actions in my college days,it helped me very much in rendering alloys (car wheels) in side in ps. Later I started using for photo editing as well.
What are ACTIONS ?
Actions allow you to automate just about any task, so you spend more of your time being creative.Ya very straight forward, but hopefully you will understand as we go along.
Why Actions ?
Have you ever done the same thing over and over again on PS? Remember re-sizing photos?
trying to apply the same theme of post-processing in hundreds of photos? Just hearing about it only irritates us right. All these can be avoided by using ACTIONS. Also with the popularity of instagram , people also have started loving photo effects. So you create your own style and save it. You can use it whenever you like, just with a click of a button.
Couple of weeks back I went to IIT,Madras, clicked lots of photos. I edited and retouched nearly 40 photos both in web friendly and HD quality in only like 45minutes. All because of actions. Below are few photos from that album.
How to use ACTIONS?
I am using 5 screen shots to explain the same.
I'm using Adobe PS CS6. windows > Actions (Alt + F9)
But in almost all the PS you will ind it in the same place.
Once the actions menu is displayed, in the bottom you will find the bar with options such as record,play etc. as show in the image.
Y0u are ready to go. Now Click on the CREATE NEW SET option. Which will add a new folder to the bottom of the ACTIONS menu.
Under the new folder created, in this case SET 4, Click on the New actions option. Which in turn will switch on the record option which is indicated by the icon changing to RED.
Now you do whatever you want, such as applying effects, re-sizing etc. which is recorded under the new action which you have created.
Once done, click on the stop option to save your action
When you to do the same thing for a different photos, just drop the photo in PS, go to actions and just use the PLAY option.
Actions nearly automates anything in PS. Its a great tool to have and to work with.
As I told you before, it helps in reducing the time spent on doing the same thing over and over again. So more time could be spent on creativity and detailing.
If something is not clear please let me know , I will try my best to help you out. This being my first tutorial it might not be that clear, but hopefully with your feedback it can improve.
Cheers.
btw almost forgot, I will leave you with a quote I have enjoyed all week
"I gaze at the sunset with the women I love
and think f/8 at 1/250".
Cheers again !!!
