John Shaw Nature & Digital Photography Workshops Click here for locations and dates
				Mexico's Colonial Heartland March 17–24, 2007
				Horses and Icons of the Wild West August 26–September 1, 2007
				Masai Mara Wildlife Reserve, Kenya September 7–21, 2007
				Australia Wildlife November 1–20, 2007

We’re all familiar with the stereotype of the Hollywood movie director who yells “Action!” As Photoshop ^© users, we should also be yelling “Action!” as Photoshop’s Actions are extremely useful, cutting down on the time spent doing repetitive processes.

In Photoshop, an "Action" is a series of commands, a saved string of instructions, that you record and which you can then play back on either a single file or on a group of files. If you find yourself performing the same time-consuming operations on image files day after day, you should learn to prepare and use Actions. With an Action, pressing a single key or at most a keystroke combination causes your recorded sequence of operations to be carried out automatically. Photoshop has quite a few prerecorded Actions in its Default Actions folder (found, of course, in the Actions Palette) but it’s extremely easy to create your own. The Photoshop Actions palette lets you record a sequence of editing steps that can be applied to an image, a selection within an image, another image, or in a batch operation to many different image files. I added a “My Actions” folder to the palette where I have quite a number of Actions I’ve written.

Actions are cross platform. That is, any Action will work on both PCs and Macs. On both operating systems, Actions have the .atn file extension. Consequently you can write an Action and share it with other Photoshop users.

The Actions Palette is the key to creating and using Photoshop Actions. The palette has two viewing modes, List View and Button View, and it must be in the former mode to record your own Action. To create a new Action, open an image and then click on the Record button. Go through the steps you want to record, then click on the Stop button at the bottom of the palette. When you’re done, the sequence in which tasks are executed can be edited by dragging and dropping in any order you wish.

Three actions I use frequently are adding copyright information to my images, preparing images for the web, and preparing images for digital projection. Here’s how to make an Action to add your copyright info.

Adobe’s XMP (Extensible Metadata Platform), built into Photoshop, is a labeling technology that allows you to embed data into the image file itself. You can use this within Photoshop to make your copyright notice an integral part of a digital image file.

Step 1: Before we actually record the Action, we need to record the information we want to add. Open a new blank document (it doesn’t matter what size) by selecting File > New, then click OK.

Step 2: Select File Info, File > File Info, and you get this box. Click on the Description tab.

Now fill in the blanks. Select “Copyrighted” from the Copyright Status drop-down menu and add your copyright notice, web site information, and anything else you want. To get the copyright symbol © on a Windows machine, hold the Alt key down and type 0169 on the numeric keypad. On a Mac it’s Option and g.

Step 3: Next, click on the Advanced choice (at the bottom of the list below “Description”) and click on Save. This saves an .xmp file containing all the copyright information you just entered. Save it with whatever name you like (such as “copyright info”) wherever you want to store it, so long as it’s an easy location to remember. Click OK to close the File Info box.

Step 4: Now we’re going to record an Action to add this information to our files. Open a new blank document (again, it doesn’t matter what size). Do File > New.

Step 5: Go to the Actions Palette, click on the right pointing triangle to get the fly-out menu, and select “New Action.”

Step 6: In the dialogue box that opens, name the action “Copyright” and assign it a function key if you wish, so that running the Action is only one keystroke. Now click the Record icon.

Step 7: Select File > File Info, click on Advanced, then click Append, go to wherever you saved the .xmp file, click on Save, then click OK to close the File Info box.

Step 8: Click the Stop Recording button at the bottom of the Actions Palette. You’re done!

From now on whenever you want to imbed your copyright information all you have to do is click the function key you chose, or select the action in the palette and click on the run button.

If you want to run this action on an entire folder of images, run it as a batch operation. Select File > Automate > Batch and fill in the appropriate choices. You need to tell Photoshop where your action is located, which action to play, what images to apply it to, and what you want done with these images.

Don’t run this operation on RAW files until after you have converted them to a usable file format.

Actions are a great help when doing repetitive steps. If you want to record web or digital slide show actions, here are some steps you need to remember to include: flatten layers, convert to 8-bit, convert to sRGB, constrain proportions, and save as a .jpeg in a different folder.

Announcement: John's newest book, John Shaw's Photoshop Field Guide, is now available. This is an eBook on CD, with step-by-step instructions on making prints using Photoshop and Epson printers. It is available only from John's website, www.johnshawphoto.com.