Photoshop CS Timesaving Techniques For Dummies [Electronic resources] نسخه متنی

Playing an Action

After recording an action, you can then play it back on an individual image file or a folder containing many image files.

Playing an action on one image

Open the image on which you want to play the action.





If the Actions palette is displayed in Command mode, select the action you want to play, and then click the Play button at the bottom of the Actions palette.

If the Actions palette is displayed in Button mode, click the action you want to play.


Try this with some of the actions that come with Photoshop. Figure 8-5 shows two actions, Water Reflection and Cast Shadow, applied to some type.




Figure 8-5: You can use the actions that come with Photoshop to enhance your images.

You can use many tools and palettes when recording an action and a few that you cannot.

These items can be used when recording an action:

Tools: All selection tools, Crop, Eyedropper, Gradient, Magic Eraser, Move, Notes, Paint Bucket, all shape tools, Slice, all type tools.

Palettes: Actions, Channels, Color, History, Layers, Paths, Styles, Swatches.

These items cannot be used when recording an action:

Tools: Blur, Brush, Burn, Clone Stamp, Dodge, Pattern Stamp, Pencil, Sharpen, Sponge.

Commands found on the View and Window menus.

Playing an action on a folder of images

Move all the files to which you want to apply the action to the same folder.





Choose File>Automate>Batch or in the File Browser choose Automate>Batch.

The Batch dialog box, shown in Figure 8-6, opens. Use this dialog box to select the folder where the images are stored and the action you want to play.




Figure 8-6: The Batch dialog box is used to select a folder and an action.






Select the action you want to play from the Action drop-down list in the Play area.





Select Folder from the Source drop-down list.





Click the Choose button to select the folder where the images are located.





In the Destination drop-down list, select the destination for the files after the action is played.

Use the Destination drop-down list to select None, Save and Close, or Folder:





None leaves the images open in Photoshop after the action is played.





Save and Close saves the images and then closes them, leaving them in their original folder.





Folder saves the images after the action is played in a new folder. If you select Folder, click Choose to select the folder where you want the images stored.







Click OK to play the action and apply it to the images in the selected folder.