How To Edit Photos In One Click: Actions

Action in Photoshop is a very quick and handy tool to adjust your photos. Action is a possibility to save steps of editing and then to apply them to other photos in one click. So, you can edit as many photos as you want in short time.

In this article we are going to show you an example how to process a large amount of photos in Photoshop in the most effective way. You can also learn how to work with Actions and what possibilities they give to the photographer. Just as an example we shall create a simple and handy action that will stamp your copyright on the picture.

In fact, Action is the consequence of your operations with a file. Whether you open a file, change its size or apply a filter - Actions will take down all these steps. When pressing the "record" button, you will be able to record a process that you use most frequently. And, of course, you can search for a number of ready Actions created by other photographers in the Internet.

How To Use Actions
There are two useful functions in Photoshop for effective work:

1. Hot Keys
Any Action can be assigned a certain hot key. For example, you can make changes in Hue/Saturation, then adjust Curves and set Alt+F10 combination of keys for this. Then, if you open any picture for editing, you can press these keys (Alt+F10) and Photoshop will apply all of the programmed Actions to that shot.

2. Batch
Batch function can be found in File->Automate, giving us possibility to apply an Action on large number of photos.

All you need to do is to select the folder, where your pictures are stored, then choose your destination folder and finally select an Action that you wish to use.

Now you can assign all of your pictures to be processed by this Action and do something else at the same time. For the sake of photographer's comfort such Actions have been created in Photoshop.

How To Create An Action
When you process a large number of photos, it takes some time to put your copyright (if you use it, of course) on every photo. In order to speed up this process, let's try to apply a special Action for this.

1. Create a new folder with Actions and call it "Copyright", for example.

2. Then create an Action "My Copyright" in that folder and assign a hot key Shift+F12 to it.

3. Open a file with the logo on a transparent background.

4. Press "Record" and start image editing that will be recorded in an Action.

5. Open your photo and go to the menu File->Place, select the file with the logo and press "Place".

6. Settle your logo at the required place.

7. If you wish your logo being more transparent, then you should change the Opacity parameter in the layer settings of the logo. For example, since you don't want your logo to distract attention from the shot, you'd better adjust the Opacity level to 22%. But it is important that you do this as a separate step after Place, - only in this case it will be recorded in your Action.

8. Combine all of the layers: click Layers->Flatten image. Then save your picture and close the file (all these steps should also be stated in the Action if you want to use the Batch regime).

9. Press the "Stop" button and that's it - your Action is ready! :) Now you can apply it to any photo by pressing a hot key or adding several pictures in the Batch.

Hot Tips

• When you work with Actions you can switch off any step of it or switch on the request to initiate an action. For example, if you switch off the "Close" function then the program will ask where and how you prefer to save the file.

• If some photos are vertically-oriented or have different side proportions, then the logo will be put in the wrong place. Unfortunately, Actions record a strict consequence of your activities and thus cannot define by themselves, what steps they need to do and how. But you can record another Action, called "My Copyright-Vertical", specifically for vertical files.
• You can also use Actions to increase sharpness or work with color and so on, which is particularly important, because an Action once created on one computer can easily be used on another.

As you see, Action is a very handy tool that gives you huge possibilities to work and edit your photos!  If you have your own actions - feel free to share them with us by posting them on our photoforum!