Hi,
So, hopefully you found the Actions discussion useful. What follows is a brief description of some of the steps we covered, to help jog your memory (if need be).
Playing Actions
Open the Actions panel (Window > Actions). Select the action, from within the appropriate action set (folder); Click the Play selection button, at the bottom of the panel.
You can also use the File > Automate > Batch… command (Tools > Photoshop > Batch… within Adobe Bridge), or the File > Scripts > Image Processor… command (Tools > Photoshop > Image Processor… within Adobe Bridge) to play an action on the files contained within a folder (or those files currently selected in Adobe Bridge).
Loading Actions
You can only do this within Photoshop. Click the 
icon to open the Actions panel menu, and select Load Actions… from the list of commands — this will launch your operating system’s browse window. Browse to, and select the action that you would like to use within Photoshop/Bridge, and click the Load button.
Jamie and I would suggest that you load the diglloyd benchmark Actions for Photoshop from here, to ensure that your copy of Photoshop is running as well as it can on your system.
If you would like, you can download the action that I use (via File > Scripts > Script Events Manager…) to ensure that 8 Bits/Channel images are automatically converted into 16 Bits/Channel images for editing, from here (right-click link, and save to your computer).
You can browse the Adobe Photoshop Marketplace to find more useful actions for your system.
Recording an Action
Before you start recording, create (or select from your Actions panel) an Action Set to save it into. I have created sets for: creating new documents, colour correction, image refinement, sharpening, and printing. Doing this helps you find actions quickly — especially when you are using the Image Processor script, or the Script Events Manager.
When you click the Create new action button (in the Action panel), you will be asked to name your action, and — optionally — assign a keyboard shortcut to it. Having done these things (and clicked the Record button), Photoshop will start recording what you are doing in the application. If your action is intended to alter an image, you should use a duplicate file to record the action steps (Image > Duplicate…) to protect your original file from unintentional alteration.
During the recording process feel free to stop — and restart — recording at any time, using the buttons at the bottom of the Actions panel. There’s no need to rush… If certain steps are not recorded by Photoshop (some of the commands in the View menu are ignored), stop recording, and choose Insert Menu Item..’ from the Actions panel menu.
Image Processor/Script Events Manager…
Jamie and I will record a video showing how we use Image Processor, and the Script Events Manager as soon as we can. In the meantime if you would like to know more about using actions, the best resource that we know of is Deke McClelland’s 18 hour video training title for Lynda.com. Go to this page for a week’s free trial of the Lynda.com Online Training Library. If you decide that you would like to subscribe, let us know — we can give you a discount on the Annual and Premium subscriptions.
Lee.
This post is tagged Actions, Performance
