Below is the seventh episode of the Adobe Photoshop Mega Series . Today's topic is Actions and Automation, the magical feature of Photoshop that will speed up your work 10 times .
Adobe Photoshop (Part 7): Actions and Automation Turn Hours of Work into Minutes
Written by : Team Daily Tech News
Website: Tech News 24
Assalamu Alaikum. In the last six episodes of the Photoshop series, we have learned about the various aesthetic aspects of design. Today, we will learn how to be a smart editor. Suppose, you have 100 images and you need to make them all the same size or put your website logo on all of them. If you do them one by one, your whole day will be over. But if you know the Action and Automation features of Photoshop, then it will take you only 30 seconds to do this task!
Photoshop is not just a drawing or editing tool, it is a very intelligent software. In today's mega guide, we will learn how to record every step of your work and automatically apply it to thousands of images.
Chapter 48: What are Photoshop Actions?
Simply put, a Photoshop action is a 'recorder'. When you perform an action on an image (such as increasing brightness, resizing, adding a watermark), Photoshop can record the information of each click. Later, when you play that 'recorded' file on another image, Photoshop will automatically perform all those actions on that new image. It's a bit like recording a video, you record it once and watch it over and over again.
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| Using the Action Panel, it is possible to bring long editing processes to a single click. |
Chapter 49: How to create your own custom actions?
Creating your own action is very easy. Follow the steps below:
1. Open the Actions panel: First, open the panel by going to Window > Actions (Alt+F9).
2. New Folder and Action: Click on the folder icon below and give it a name (e.g. 'My Daily Work'). Then click on the 'Create New Action' plus (+) icon.
3. Start recording: Whenever you click the 'Record' button, your every action will be recorded.
4. Complete the task: Now do whatever you need to do with the image, such as resizing the image or doing color grading.
5. Stop recording: When you are finished, click the square 'Stop' button at the bottom of the panel.
Wow! Your first automation file or action is created. Now just open any new image and click the 'Play' button and everything will be done in seconds.
Chapter 50: Batch Processing Edit thousands of images at once
You learned the action for one photo, but what if you have 100 photos? We will use the Batch option for that.
- Method : Go to File > Automate > Batch.
- Settings : From here, select the action you created. Then specify your image folder as the 'Source'.
- Result : As soon as you press OK, you will see Photoshop automatically opening each image, editing it, saving it and closing it. You just sit back, have a coffee and watch the computer do the work for you!
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| Bulk image editing is done through batch processing. |
Chapter 51: Content-Aware Fill Smart Automation
This is one of the best automatic tools in Photoshop. If there is an unwanted person or object in your photo, you no longer have to spend hours and hours cloning stamps to remove it.
1. Select the object with the Lasso Tool.
2. Click Edit > Content-Aware Fill.
3. Photoshop will automatically understand the surrounding environment and fill in the area in such a way that no one will know there was anything there.
Chapter 52: Automation without software created by Droplets
A droplet is a small icon or file that will be on your desktop. You don't even need to open Photoshop!
- Go to File > Automate > Create Droplet and save a file.
- Now drag your photo folder with the mouse and drop it on the droplet icon.
- You will see that Photoshop automatically opens in the background and edits all the images. This is the best time saver for professional photographers.
Chapter 53: Scripting and Image Processor
If you are a website developer or prepare images for a blog, Image Processor will be very useful to you.
- Using it, you can convert multiple images at once to JPG, PSD, or TIFF formats at a specific resolution.
- When doing this, the image quality can also be set in one place.
Chapter 54: Benefits of using Premium Actions
There are many premium actions available on the internet (e.g. GraphicRiver or DebianArt ), such as turning an image into a sketch, oil painting, or double exposure effects with one click.
- Method : Load the downloaded file by clicking Load Actions from the Actions panel menu.
- This will allow you to professionally perform tasks that are outside your expertise.
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| Give your design a new look using free or premium actions from the internet. |
Chapter 55: Pro-Tips and Warnings
It is important to keep a few things in mind when using automation:
1. Keep a backup: It's a good idea to keep a backup copy of the image before starting automation, so that if something goes wrong, the original image isn't lost.
2. Stop command: You can turn on 'Stop' or 'Toggle Dialog' between actions so that you can manually input somewhere.
3. Image size: If your action has a selection, try to make all the images the same resolution, otherwise the selection will not fit properly.
The main difference between a regular editor and a pro-editor is the speed of work. In today's mega guide, we learned how to use technology to reduce your workload. This action and automation feature will save a lot of time in your freelancing career, which you can spend on learning something new.
Do you have any questions about automation? If you need an action file for a specific task, let us know in the comments. Daily Tech News is always here to help.
In the next episode, we will learn Photoshop Video Editing and Animation, how to create small GIFs or videos using Photoshop. Until then, keep working smart!
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