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Photoshop Actions

Photoshop actions can make your life much easier if you know how to use them. Photoshop actions are used to accomplish the repetitive tasks with just one click or key press. There are many free Photoshop actions on the internet but we will learn how to make our own actions instead of doing the same boring work repeatedly. Trying to get one of the real life examples, I will make a new Photoshop action for making multiple sizes from one thumbnail image because I used to do that for different sites repeatedly. You can follow the same logic to do whatever tasks you want.

Result & Comments |

1. Show Photoshop actions palette by clicking Window > Actions or simply pressing Alt+F9.
   
2. Open the image that you want to apply the actions to, the image you would like to take multiple sizes copies from in this example.
3. It is a good idea to group your actions in sets so click the folder icon located at the bottom of the actions palette to create a new set and name your set. I will name it "Custom Actions".
4. Click the "Create new action" icon located at the bottom of the actions palette (the one that looks like create a new layer).
5. Give a descriptive name to your action in the "New Action" window. You can assign a function key for your action or a color if you like and click Record.
   
6. Now, start the boring repetitive tasks (for the last time). Notice, the speed you do your steps does not matter at all, Photoshop will attempt to do those steps as fast as possible when you play this action afterwards.
7. In our example, I want to make an action to generate thumbs of an image with multiple sizes for multiple sites, so click Image > Image Size and type 75 for width, 75 for height and click Ok. Photoshop will generate a new action under "Create Thumbs" and call it "Image Size" or whatever step you have done here.
   
8. Click File > Save for web, choose the format that you like and choose a name for you image. NOTICE that Photoshop will generate the same file when you play this action again so make sure to choose a bath that you are sure it will be there when you run this action afterwards or it will fail. In this example, I will choose "C:\75X75.gif" for file name and path.
9. Repeat the same steps again with different file sizes and different file names, make sure to start from the biggest file size and move to smaller ones for a better quality.
10. After you have finished whatever steps you want, click the Stop icon located at the bottom of the Actions palette. Now you have completed your first Photoshop actions set. If you look at your actions palette now, you will see all the steps you have done, click the little arrow on the left of every step to see its details.
    
11. Now for the fun part, if you want to create different thumb sizes for another image, open the other image in Photoshop, click the little arrow on the left of the "Custom Actions" set in the Actions palette. Select the "Create Thumbs" action, click the play icon located at the bottom of the Actions palette and watch Photoshop doing all the boring work for you!
    
12. You can modify any of the actions simply by double clicking on it in the actions window, you can also delete any step by choosing it and clicking the delete icon located at the bottom of the Actions palette.
13. Do you want a confirmation before running your action? It is easy! Click the arrow located at the right top of the Actions palette, choose Insert Stop, type the message that you want appear, check Allow Continue and press Ok. Move the resulting Stop action to the top of all the other actions.
    
14. You can temporarily disable any action in the action set by clicking the left most check box next to it or only disable its modal window by clicking the check box next to it.

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