Photo Retouching Tips | How to Work With Photoshop Actions
Posted by MediaNovak | September 30, 2013 | Photography Tips and Tricks
Photo Retouching Tips | What are photoshop actions? Basically actions are shortcuts that photographers use to speed up the editing process. Sure you could edit things by hand and lighten things up, change the tint of the file, add more color with your hue/saturation tool – but actions let you do all of this with the click of a button. Actions are really helpful because you can get a variety of looks quickly and saves a TON of time in the editing room.
Many photographers make their own actions to get the style they like, or you can download them from numerous places online. If you never used it before you should definitely check out this tutorial and see what these actions are all about.
1. The Actions Palette | Photo Retouching Tips
The Actions palette is where anything and everything related to actions is done, from recording and playing them to saving, loading, editing, deleting, and organizing them. By default, the Actions palette is grouped in beside the History palette, even though the two palettes have nothing to do with each other. Also by default, the History palette is the one “in focus”, meaning that it’s the one visible while the Actions palette is hiding behind it.
2. The Controls | Photo Retouching Tips
If you look down at the very bottom of the Actions palette, you’ll see a series of icons, similar to what we see with most of Photoshop’s palettes. Notice how the three icons on the left look very similar to traditional recording device controls, and in fact, they represent the exact same functions. Starting from the left (the square icon), we have Stop, Record, and Play, followed by the New Action Set icon, the New Action icon, and finally, the standard Trash Bin icon for deleting actions and action sets.
3. The Palette Menu | Photo Retouching Tips
As with all of the palettes in Photoshop, the Actions palette comes with its own fly-out menu where we can access various options and commands, as well as load in some additional action sets. You can access the fly-out menu by clicking on the menu icon in the top right corner of the Actions palette. If you’re using an older version of Photoshop, you’ll see a small right-pointing arrow in the top right corner of the palette. Click on it to access the palette menu.
4. Opening an Action Set | Photo Retouching Tips
Actions in the Actions palette are arranged in sets, each of which can contain one or more actions. The default set is Default Actions. To open an action set, click the right-pointing arrow to the left of the action set name. Now you’ll see the list of actions in the set.
5. Running an Action | Photo Retouching Tips
Begin by opening the image and making sure that it’s active. Select the action in the Actions palette and then click the Play Selection icon along the bottom of the Actions palette. Watch as the action plays on your image. See how quickly it performs the steps?
6. Undoing an Action | Photo Retouching Tips
To undo the effect of an action, click the History palette and step back through the commands individually until the image returns to the desired look, or click an entry in the history to return to that editing position. It’s often enlightening to step backward and forward through the steps that the action performs, to learn more about how it works and how complex effects can be created.
At the very bottom of the fly-out menu is where we find additional action sets that are installed with Photoshop, like Frames, Image Effects, and Text Effects, along with others. Some of the actions you’ll find in these sets can actually be somewhat useful, but unlike the Default Actions set, they are not loaded automatically for us.
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