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Photoshop Actions And You

posted by John Owen on July 5th, 2009, in Basics, Photoshop | 7 Comments

Many people that have photoshop have never used the actions window let alone seen it. Well this is about to change because this tutorial will teach you all you need to know about the actions window. The action window lets you record every action you make in photoshop from using the filter gallery to creating a new layer and applying a gradient to it. Nearly everything is recorded. Actions are desgined to increase productivity and speed. They are in its simplest form – custom built shortcuts with an included option to assign a hotkey to an action.

For this tutorial I am going to be using an image of a tiger, you can find this image here.

Step 1

Open up the image you want to use, now if you don’t already have the actions panel open go to Window > Actions

You should already see by some actions by default, these ones are given to you. Some of them are quite handy but mainly useless and arn’t very good! If you want you can create you’re own folder or you can use the default one provided. I created a new folder named ‘Tutorial’ for the sake of this tutorial.

On a side note: When you create a new action, the action automatically starts recording, you have been warned.

Step 2

The action I’m going to create is increasing the contrast in a different way, using the Gaussian Blur method. This method works very effectivley in some images.

Now, create a new action.

Set the options as you wish, now click Record. Follow my steps to record this action. Be wary if you make any mistake the actions panel will record this! Don’t worry though, you can stop the recording at any time, delete the unwanted steps and then start recording again. It is very versatile.

Step 3

Select the tiger layer, and go to Filter > Blur Gaussian Blur

As the picture states, set the Radius to 2.0 pixels.

Now its time to Fade the gaussian blur, go to Edit > Fade Gaussian Blur…

Set the options accordingly.

Now you can press Stop on the actions panel. Although this action is very very short it will still increase your working speed. Some actions are very long about 30 steps or so, these actions achieve special effects such as a horror effect.

Finished!

You should be able to apply this action to any image. If you have any questions just comment.