ABSTRACT
Why waste your time performing repetitive tasks when Photoshop is able to automate these processes for you? By using the Actions panel you can record steps in Photoshop as an action and use this to replay on other images. Figure 1.81 shows a screen shot of the Actions panel, where it currently displays an expanded view of the Default Actions set. As you can see from the descriptions, these actions can perform automated tasks such as adding a vignette to a photo or creating a wood frame edge effect. OK, these are not exactly the sort of actions you would use every day, but if you go to the panel fly-out menu you will see listed in the fly-out menu a number of action sets that are worth installing. To run an action, you will usually need to have a document already open in Photoshop and press the Play button. It is also quite easy to record your own custom actions, and once you get the hang of how to do this you can use the File ➯ Automate ➯ Batch… command to apply recorded actions to several images at once. You can also go to the File ➯ Automate menu and choose ‘Create Droplet…’. Droplets are like selfcontained batch action operations located in the Finder/ Explorer. All you have to do is drag an image file to a droplet to initiate a Photoshop action process (see Figure 1.82). I explain later in Chapter 11 how to automate Photoshop and make efficient use of actions. By saving and loading actions it is easy to share your favorite Photoshop actions with other users – all you have to do is to double-click an action icon to automatically install it in the Actions panel, and if Photoshop is not running at the time, this will also launch the program.
