Save you time with Actions!

An action is a series of tasks that you play back on a single file or a batch of files. It seems a lot of Photoshop users overlooked actions and considered that actions are complicated to use. It’s true it’s not as simple as layer styles, but if you take a closer look at it, it’s actually easy to understand. Also it can save time and increase productivity by automating repetitive tasks.

Photoshop comes with predefined actions installed that help you perform common tasks. You can use these actions as is, customize them to meet your needs, or create new actions. Also there are a lot of actions you can download. One of the examples is here from DesignReviver.

Resizing hundreds of photos in a min!

Today I will show you how to resize a lot of photos in a sec using a simple action. A lot of my friends are “lovers” of Myspace, Windows Live Spaces and Cyworld (Of course Bebo, Facebook etc) and love to upload heaps and heaps of their photos in their blogs. And I saw many friends among them are spending the whole afternoon to resize their photos one by one in Photoshop.

Here the action will help you save time. Just follow the instruction below!

Step 1 – Opening photos you want to resize

Open photos you wish to resize. Here I have opened three fish photos to resize.

Step 2 – Creating a Set

Before we create an action, we need to create a set to group the action.

1. Click on the action menu
2. Click the button at the right corner to bring up the list.
3. Click “New Set” to creat a new set and name it “resizer” or as you wish.

Step 3 – Creating an Action

4. Click on the Set you’ve just created.
5. Click the button at the right corner again and click on the “New Action” menu. Name it whatever you want.

Once you creat the action, it will automatically start to record your action.

Step 4 – Resizing photos

6. Resize the photo as you wish and you will see new action appers as “Image Size”

Step 5 – Save for Web & Devices

7. Save your photo as a web format from the “Save for Web & Devices” in a preferred location. And close the photo currently opened in the Photoshop.

8. And stop the recording by clicking the stop button as the picture below.

Well Done! You’ve created a cool Resizer action. Now let’s try the action and you will see how actions are cool for repetative tasks.

Step 6 – Run the Action

With another photo opened, select the Action you’ve created and click the “Play Selection” button.

As you can see, it’s not quite hard to set and run actions once you have ideas how to use it.

Save your time and Enjoy the Actions!