Photoshop Techniques - Using Actions

As a Chicago Marketing Company, the designers at Integraphix are avid users of the Adobe Creative Suite. For print projects and web projects, our designers in Chicago often use Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, and InDesign on a daily basis. With so much experience using these programs, our creative agency has become very proficient working with design software.

Have you ever needed to modify a mass amount of images at one time? Take for instance you are creating an online gallery for a web design you created. To make your gallery look clean and professional you definitely want all of your images to be the same size. If you have many images this may seem like a very long process. Luckily, there is a solution for modifying multiple different images fast and efficiently. Actions are a 1 step editing process in Photoshop that allows you to preform multiple different actions with one click.  Actions can be extremely useful time-savers when you find yourself performing the same steps over and over again.

Creating Actions:

Photoshop actions are very easy to create and use. An action is simply formatting that has been recorded and can be used on any other Photoshop Document. To record you own action, open the “Actions” palette and hit the new action button. The new action button is the button second from the right side of the bottom of the actions palette.

You will need to designate a name for your action and also a function key. If you set an action with the function key: “F5” every time you are in Photoshop and click the F5 key, the action will automatically take place.

Once the action has been created you can record all of the formatting you would like to take place in the action. You can record unlimited amount of changes including size changes, text adds or edits, color changes, file saving and more! Once you have finished carrying out all of the desired steps, hit the “Stop” button in the action palette.

Installing Actions:

As a Chicago Marketing Company the Integraphix designers love to share design techniques and ideas with other designers. There are many Photoshop actions that are available to be purchased and downloaded. There are multiple ways you can install Photoshop actions. According to our expert graphic designers, the easiest way to download actions is to drag the downloaded files in the “Actions” folder contained within the “Presets” folder in your Photoshop application folder.  If this technique doesn’t work for you, you can always click on the little arrow on the right of the actions menu and click on “Load Actions”. This option will allow you to navigate to any actions on your computer and load them into Photoshop instantly.

Do you use Photoshop actions? Share your favorite Photoshop actions with our Chicago Marketing Company and leave us a comment!! We would love to hear your feedback. For more tips and tricks on Graphic Design - Visit our website: http://www.integraphix.com and Contact Us!