Transcripts
1. Introduction to Actions in Photoshop - Introduction: Hello. I'm Helen Bradley. Welcome to this graphic design for lunch class, which is an introduction to actions in Adobe Photoshop. Graphic design for lunch, is a series of classes that teach a range of tips and techniques for creating designs and for working in applications such as Illustrator, Photoshop, and Procreate. Today we're looking at using actions in Photoshop. We're going to look at what an action is. I'll show you how to find and use Photoshop's own shipped actions. We'll talk about some safety precautions to take when you're running actions. I'll show you how to download actions from the web to use, and finally, we'll make our own actions as well. On completing this class, you should have a good grasp of the basics of creating and using actions in Photoshop. Now as you're watching these videos, you will see a prompt which lets you recommend this class to others. Please, if you're enjoying the class, do two things. Firstly, give it a thumbs up, and secondly, if you would, write just a few words about why you're enjoying this class. These recommendations help other students to see that this is the class that they too might enjoy. If you'd like to leave me a comment or a question, please do so. I read and respond to all of your comments and questions, and I look at and respond to all of your class projects. If you're ready now, let's get started working with actions in Photoshop.
2. Pt 1 - Run Photoshop Default Actions: When we're talking about actions in Photoshop, typically actions are nothing more than a set of recorded keystrokes. They're steps that we could otherwise take ourselves in Photoshop but because it might be a task that you use over and over again, if you record it as an action you can just play the action back anytime you need to do that task and everything progresses much more quickly. It's also more accurate because if an action is correctly written, it's always going to do the same thing every time exactly the same way. I'm going to start with an image I open and we're going to look at the actions that come with Photoshop. To do that, we'll choose ''Window'' and then actions. This is the default set of actions that are shipped with Photoshop. Now, before I play one of these on an image, I've absolutely no clue potentially what any of these might do. I'm going to make sure that my image is a smaller size, image, image size. This one is 5,000 pixels wide so I'm going to start with an image that's only 1,000 pixels wide and click "OK." These Photoshop actions are a little bit unusual in that if you download actions from the web, typically they'll come with instructions but these have no instructions at all. Using them on a smaller size image is going to mean that they're going to play much faster and so that you can see the results of the action and then decide if it's something you want to actually do to your full size image and then go back and do it again. But if you don't like the effect then you can very easily just toss it. I'm going to run this action called Quadrant colors, there are a whole series of actions here in a folder called default actions and every one of these little arrows indicates the starting point for a single action. Now, you can see your actions like this or you can click this little icon here and choose "Button mode." In this case, the actions will work like buttons so you can just click an action to run it. It's up to you which way you want to see your actions. The one I'm going to run is called Quadrant colors. I'm just going to click to play it. That happened really quickly because I had it set to play really quickly. If you want to wind back in action you can choose ''Window'' and then history and then you can just wind it back. You can also say the steps that were done in running that action. I'm going back to the reduced size image. I'm going back to my actions palette, I'm going to get out of button mode and I'm going to playback options and we're going to do this a little bit more slowly. We are going to choose step-by-step so it's going to execute a little more slowly. With Quadrant colors selected, I can play it by clicking here. We can see now as we're stepping through the action what's happening, well, it's going to black and white first and then the selection is being made and a portion of the image is being colored. It's happening here and here again. That's the action played at a slower speed and obviously quadrant colors just gives us four different color quadrants for image. Now, a word of warning before you play around with actions, not only is it best to play them on a smaller size image, it's also really important that if actions come with instructions that you read them really carefully and never run an action on the only copy you have of an image. Because if you don't know what the action does, there's a chance that it could destroy your photograph in some way in a way that you don't want it to appear and then it could save that edited image back over the original, so you never want to be working on an original. If you've made edits to an image that you want to keep, save the image and then make a duplicate of it and then go and run the action on that duplicate but never on your originals. Now, before we leave these actions that are shipped with Photoshop, let's have a look at another action. There's one called wood frame 50 pixel. I'm just going to click on it and I'm going to click to "Play it." It's warning us it has a little message here that the image size must be a minimum of 100 pixels wide and tall. Well, ours is, so I can click "Continue," otherwise I would click "Stop" and find another image that was the right size image. We can watch the progression down the list of tasks as this action plays. This action has now finished playing and what it did was add a wooden frame effect around our photo. You probably want to play your actions that slowly so you can always go back to playback options and just set them to accelerate it and click "OK" so that they will run at a regular speed. There's a look at the actions that are shipped with Photoshop and you can experiment with the others that are listed here. But we're going now to find some on the web that we can download and use and we're going to look at a few things that we need to do when we do just that.
3. Pt 2 - Download and Run an Action: We're now going to look at downloading and using some actions that we can find on the web. Now, you can find plenty of actions for free and also actions that are for-fee actions. We're going to use this one first of all and what it does, is it takes a portion of the image that you select and it enlarges it and places it inside this magnifying glass circle. So you can use it to draw attention to something in an image. We're going to start by downloading the actions. I'm going to click on the download link and download it. Most of the time, actions are pretty quick to download because they're just a text file. This one is a little different. It has a JPEG in it, but it also has a PSD file. We're going to need to find out what they're all about. But for now, I'm just going to extract the files there. Now that they are extracted, I can actually use them. Back on the web, I'm going back to the link that I'm going to give you because here are some instructions for working with the Action. We're being told to install the Action and open the PSD file. So the PSD file that is inside this zip file is actually there for an important reason. It's really part of this entire process. We need to edit the Smart Object background and then close the PSB file. We need to move the magnifier layer wherever we want to on the background. Before we run the Action, we have to close every window, except for the PSD file that we are given. We need to run the action and then we need to play with the background like he did where he's placed a Gaussian Blur. You should always read these instructions carefully because they're going to tell you how the Action works or what you need to do before you go ahead and start running it. I'm just going to close this, and I'm going to get my PSD file and I'm going to open it in Photoshop. This is the PSD file that I've been given. Going to the Layers here and you'll see that there's a magnifier layer and there's a put image here layer. This is a Smart Object layer so I'm going to click on the Smart Object thumbnail here. This opens a Smart Object file. What I need to do, is to put my own image in here. I'll choose File and then Place Embedded. Now, this is the folder I'm working in, but I have a set of duplicate images here just to make sure that I'm not working on the original. So I'm going to select the image I'm working on, and click Place. It's going to be placed inside this PSB file. Now, I'm going to need to size it up, so I'm just going to hold Shift as I scale it. It covers the entire original layer in this image. That's really important because I don't want any of his image to show in the final presentation. Once I've done this, this is a PSB file. It's a image embedded as a smart object and so what I need to do with it, is to close it and to say Yes to saving it. That's part one of the instructions. The second part of the instructions was to go and take this magnifier and put it over the area of the image I'm most interested in. Well, I'm most interested in this little girl's face, so I am going to place it on top of her. I need to make sure that I have no other images open, which I don't. Now I can run the action, but I don't have the action available yet to run so let's go to Window and Actions. I'm going to open the flyout menu and I'm going to choose Load Actions because I want to load the action that came with the zip file. Now, when I click Load Action, what happens is that Photoshop goes to the location where it expects to find the installed actions in Photoshop, the ones that I've created or downloaded myself. I'm just going to go and open the folder that contain those unzipped files. They're here. I'm just going to drag the magnifier action into this folder, which is where they need to be stored for Photoshop to be able to easily find them. You don't have to do that. I could just run the action from the Downloads folder, but this is a better way of doing it. I'm going to select my magnifier action. I'm going to click Load. That loads it now as an action in the action's list here in Photoshop and here it is, Mario, magnifier action. Well, I've done everything that I was told to do before I ran the actions, so I'm ready to now run it. I'll click on the Magnifier and I'm going to click Run. The action has now done exactly what it said it would do. It's taken this little girl's head and it's blown it up inside the circle so it looks like a magnifying glass. But also, as was suggested, we probably need to do something with the background. We'll go here to the Layers palette, we'll go to background layer here and we're just going to blur it with Filter, Blur, Gaussian Blur. I'm going to apply a reasonable Gaussian blur to the image, and I'll click Okay. There's our image with the action having been played on it. The action has gone ahead and taken a cut out from our original image. It's filled the circle with a larger size version of the little girl's head and it's added some lifestyle effects such as stroke in a shadow, inner glow, and drop shadow to this to give it the look of a magnifying glass. There's the first of the two actions we're going to look at.
4. Pt 3 - Run a photo fix action: This next action that we're going to look at is one that helps you to edit an image to get a certain look and I'm going to give you the link to download this as well. What it is is an artistic light leak action. We're going to go all the way down to the bottom here and just click here to download the coffee shop artistic light leak action, I'm just going to click on that. When this opens, we're just going to extract all the files. Now basically what this action is going to do is just apply an artistic look to the image. Now there's not a lot to read about this particular action. We're just told that the action applies three different gorgeous colored light effects in orange, pink, and purple, and a slight hayes to the image and is completely adjustable. We're going to say what all of that means when we run it on our image. I'm just going to close the browser window. I've got an image already open here that I'm going to use it on. I chose something that could really use a light leaf effect. Again, this is from unsplash.com. Going to my Actions panel and I'm going to need to go and get the Actions. I'm going to click on the Flyout menu, choose Load actions. Here I have opened the folder that contains the extracted file, and it's just a single ATN file. I'm going to click Load, I'm just going to run it from that folder. Now I'm going to click on the action itself and just click Run. The first step of this action is just a small message to us, telling us a little bit about the action and the person who created it. We're just going to click Continue. It's now complete. We ran it at a regular speed. There's a fast speed. Let's go and say what we've got here. Well, we've got a series of layers here, so there's a top warm light layer. The top of the image and it's giving it warm light, that orangey yellow light. Then there's some pink light throughout the image, and then some purple light. There's a contrast boasting light too. So she's boosted the contrast and added three different types of light into the image. Then there's a layer here that's not even enabled at the moment, which will reduce the effect. So we can reduce it if we want to. Any of these layers can be adjusted so we just double-click on it. You'll see that just has a gradient fill in it. So we could edit the gradient fill and we could also edit the mask on these layers. That's another typical use for actions in Photoshop to add photographic effects, but they're not limited to photographic effects. You can do all things with actions, as we're going to say, when we go and create our own action. This action is really good because it doesn't destroy our original image at the bottom here we've still got the original image as it was before we ran the action. I particularly like this lady's actions because she is very cautious with how she treats your images.
5. Pt 4 - Create a Photo Editing Action: Now it's time for us to create our own actions. I'm going to go back and open the deer file and we're going to create an action based on this. What the action is going to do is it's going to give this image a lighter color and a sepia tone. It's a fairly easy process to undertake so I can record it as I go. If you're a little unsure, you may want to run through the steps first before you start recording the action. You certainly would do that for a more complex action. But I'm going to the actions palette here and I'm going to create a new group from my action. I'm going to click here on the create new set, I'm going to call these Helen's. I'm going to click here to create a new action within my group and this is going to be vintage. Look, and I'll click record. Right now, anything that I do in Photoshop is being recorded. Let's go to the Layers palette. First thing I'm going to do is I'm going to make a duplicate layer. I'm going to right-click and choose duplicate layer and click Okay. I'm preserving my background layer. Now, this image is really sharp, so I want to make it a little less sharp. I'm going to run a blower on it with Filter Blur, Gaussian Blur. I'm just going to apply about a 1.5 pixel blur. You can see that softened the image quite considerably, so I'll click Okay. But because my user may not want the image to be quite this soft, I'm going to add a mask to this I'm going to click on Add Layer Mask. Next up we're going to make the image black and white. Layer, new Adjustment Layer, black and white. Now I am choosing the black and white adjustment layer because it has the ability to apply a tint. I'm just going to click on the tint check box here and I can click here on the color picker and choose a tint to apply to the image. I want to do a sepia tone here, so I'll click Okay. I could if I wanted to adjust the underlying black and white, but I'm not going to bother with that. Finally, I'm going to add some brightness and reduce the contrast. I'm going to choose again layer, new Adjustment Layer, brightness contrast. I'm going to increase the brightness quite heavily and I'm going to reduce the contrast. Now this has given me a vintage look here, but I would like to bring back a little bit of the underlying color. I'm going to the black and white layer and I'm just going to drag down the opacity a little bit to get a little bit of the original color appearing through the image. Now, if I'm happy with that, I'm going to the actions palette and just going to click here to stop recording. Let's see how it works when we go and use it on a fresh image. I'm just going to discard this image and I'm going to open it fresh. I'm going to click here on my vintage look and I'm going to click to run it. Then I'm going to check my last palette to make sure that everything that I expected to happen has happened. Well, we've got our background copy with its mask. That's really important. We've got our black and white layer at reduced opacity and our brightness and contrast. It works on the image that we created it on. Let's go now and make sure that it works on another image. It's always important to try your actions on a couple of images to make sure they work as expected. Here we are with the Helen's action set. I've clicked vintage look, I'm just going to click to run the action, but let's slow it down this time. Let's do a step-by-step on this. With the action selected, I'm just going to click to play it. There's our black and white, there's our tint, here's our brightness and contrast. Then the reduction in our opacity of that black and white tint layer to see some of the original image underneath and there's our layers palette. It's worked perfectly on this second image. We can now be pretty confident that is action's going to work as expected when we next go to use it.
6. Pt 5 - Create a more Advanced Action: This time let's look at creating a slightly more complex action. For this, I'm going to step through the action process before we actually do it just to make sure that we understand exactly what we're doing. Now we're going to prompt the user to open a file so we have to go and to encourage them to open a file of their choice and that's going to be an important step in the action. Next step, we're going to make sure that the background layer is free. So I'm going to choose Layer, New, Layer From Background, so that we no longer have a background layer, but we have a floating layer because that's going to allow us to do certain things to this image. Next step, we're going to suggest to our user that it would be best if they crop this image to a square, but we'll also give them an opportunity to crop it to whatever size that they like. For me, I'm going to go ahead and crop mine. So I have a one-to-one ratio selected here, and I'm just going to crop it in a bit. So I'm going to stop for them to do that. Then we're also going to encourage them to resize the image because it might be a little bit big particularly given the size of images that are coming out of cameras these days. So we're going to go Image, Image Size, and we're going to suggest that they resize it smaller. I'm going to resize mine to 1000 pixels wide. Now we're going to come back into the action and we're going to add an inner shadow around this image. Now, there isn't an inner shadow effect but that actually doesn't work in the way that we want it. We're actually going to add an inner glow. So I'm going to click on the Outlast Style icon, I'm going to choose Inner Glow. For my inner glow. I'm going to choose a darky brown color. I'm going to set the blend mode to "Multiply" because you'll need to get this shadow effect. I'm just going to adjust the size to "Suit" and click "Okay". Next up, I'm going to add some area around the image. I'm going to do that with Image and then Canvas Size. But I don't want to do it with pixels because I don't know how big my user or me. If I use it in future, it's going to make this image. So I'm going to want to select Percent. Then I'm going to add 10 percent to the width, I'm going to add five percent to the height. I'm going to click in the middle here to make sure that the extra canvas is added all around the image. I'm going to make sure that Relative is selected. Now before you leave this dialogue, it's critical that you check these values, because if you type 10 first and then choose "Percent", the value is going to change like minus 90 or something. So just double-check this to make sure that reads 10 percent and five percent before you leave this dialogue. Click "Okay". We're now going to do that again, Image, Canvas Size. This time we're just going to add 15 percent of the height. So I'm going to choose Percent and you can see this is what happens with the height. As soon as you choose Percent, you lose your height value. I'm just going to make that 15 percent again. This time I want the extra canvas to go on the bottom here so I want to click this icon here that puts the photo at the top and the extra space at the bottom. Click "Okay". Now I want to add a layer to my image so I'm going to click the Add New Layer icon. I'm going to drag it below the existing layer and I'm going to fill it with white. So I'm going to choose Edit, Fill, I'm just going to select White as my fill color and click "Okay". That's going to be the effect that we're going to create. So we're going to make an action that's going to do all of this. But I'm thinking when I do that action, I want a little bit extra at the top. So I'm actually going to make it 10 percent all the way around on my first hit and then an extra 10 percent on the second hit on the bottom. This is giving me a look at what I plan to do and tweaking it as I go. Let's close that. Don't want to save it. Now, I'm going to go and reopen the Puffin file. So I'm just going click "Open Recent" and reopen it. But when I create the action, I want to prompt my user to open a file. It's just I can't actually record the prompt to the user and also open a file myself. So I need to make sure they have a file open first. That's a little bit tricky but that's the way you're going to do it. I'm going to click on the Actions palette. I'm going to click on Helen's actions. I'm going to click on New. I'm going to call this Polaroid because it's a Polaroid look and I'm going to click "Record". The first step I want to do is to get the person who's using this action to open a file so I need to get them to operate a menu. I'm going to click here on the fly out menu for the action, I'm going to click "Insert Menu Item". We get this Insert Menu Item dialogue and this is prompting us to tell the action what dialogue we want to show on the screen. So I'm going to choose File and then Open. You can see that it's going to show the file open dialogue. I'm just going to click "Okay". That's going to prompt the user to open a file. Once they've opened the file, the very next thing that we want them to do is to crop the image. So we want to stop and tell them to go and crop it. Let's go to this fly out menu and let's choose Insert Stop, and we're going to tell them what to do. What I'm saying is crop the image now, a square shape is best. Click the Play button when you are done to continue. I want to allow them to continue once they've completed that step. I'm going to click "Okay". Next up we're going to convert the Background layer here to a Regular layer so I choose Layer, New, Layer From Background and click "Okay". We want to allow them to resize the image. So again, we're going to add a menu. We're going back to the Actions palette, going to click "Here" and choose "Insert Menu Item". We're going to choose Image, Image Size, and then click "Okay". Now we could send them a message before we did that but we're not going to bother, we've already done a message with the Stop. But it would be a good idea perhaps to send them a message just telling them what you anticipate they're supposed to do at this stage. So once they've finished sizing the image, we're ready to add the inner shadow. So going to the Layers Palette here, and the inner shadow was actually going to be an inner glow so I'm just going to click on "Inner Glow". The settings that I have selected here, even though I haven't adjusted them because they're there from my practice run, are going to be added to the actions. So if I'm happy with them, I can just click "Okay". Now we need to add the extra space and we're going to do that with Image Canvas Size. Again, we're going to select Percent. Because I've decided to change it up a little bit, I'm going to add 10 percent all around. So I'm going to add 10 percent to the height and to the width. I'm going to click in the middle selector here and just click "Okay". Then I'm going to go and do it again. Image, Canvas Size, again Percent but this time I'm only going to add 10 percent to the height and I'm going to make sure that it goes to the very bottom here. Relative is selected, click "Okay". Then I'm going to add a new layer, move it to the very bottom, I'm going to fill it with white. Edit. Fill. White is my color here, it's already selected, I can just click "Okay". Now I can turn my action recording off. I have something which should run as a Polaroid style action. So let's just close our file. Don't save it and let's see how it goes. I'm going to click on the Polaroid. I'm going to click to run it but let's just do it at a slow speed or make sure at least that we're doing it step-by-step at the slow speed. So I'm going to click "Play". Now the first thing that happens is that we are prompted to open a file. So this is really good, it's working so far. So I'm going to click this file to open it and click "Open". It says now crop the image now square shape is best. Click the Play button when you're done to continue. Now, you could just click to continue and you would continue down with the action but we're going to stop it because I don't want to crop it. So I'm just going to come in here, crop it. I've already got a one-to-one ratio of selector so let's just size it up. A little bit better? Click the check mark. Now I've got the next step in the action is highlighted so I can just click to continue playing it. That's what you're going to do anytime you encounter a stop like that. Once you've done whatever you are told to do, you can then click the play button to continue on from that point. Now we're given this dialogue. We don't have a notice to what we are to do that would be better if we did, but I'm just going to resize it to 1000 pixels. It's square because I'd already cropped it to a square. I'm going to click "Okay". You can say that the action is now continuing on. It didn't need a continue because it had already prompted me with what to do by showing me that dialogue and resizing is one of those action steps that you can continue automatically on afterwards. You just can't do it with a crop. Crop is a special command. So you're going to have to Stop, let them crop the image and then tell them effectively to continue on from that point. But with Image Size, the behavior in Photoshop is a little bit different and you can just continue on with the action after that. So there is our little Polaroid action that turns any image into a Polaroid style image. Now before we finish up with this particular action, I'm just going to close this image. I don't want to save it but I do want to have a look and see how we would cope with that image sizing problem where we aren't actually telling them what to do with it. We're just throwing the image size dialogue up on the screen. So this is how we could deal with it. We're going to click on the step before the Image Size. So this is the set background which just turns the background layer into a regular layer. The next step is going to be Image Size. When we add things to an action, they go below the current step which is why we're selecting Set Background. I'm going to click the fly out menu and I'm going to insert a stop. Now it's perfectly acceptable to add a stop after you've actually created the action. You can edit these steps if you need to. So what we're going to do is tell them that they're about to see the image size dialogue and tell them what to do. So what I've said here is when the image size dialogue appears, you can reduce the size of the image if you like. Around 1000 pixels wide and tall is a good setting. When you click "Okay", the action will continue automatically. I'm going to click here on Allow Continue and I'm going to click "Okay". Inside the macro here we have our set background and now we have a stop, and that stop has that message in it. So let's go ahead now let's re-run our polaroid action. Just see how it works. Now, I'm going to speed it up this time so it's going to go fast past the areas where the action is just performing tasks. That's of course going to stop whenever it needs to stop. That's not going to be affected by choosing accelerated performance. I'm just going to click the Go button. I'm going to select a different image this time. I'm told to crop it, so I'm going to stop because I do want to crop it. Once I've done that, I can go back and click my Continue button. Now I'm told to resize it. So I'm going to click "Continue" because I want to see this dialogue. I'm going to type in my 1000 pixels to set the width and height. I'll click "Okay". Then the action just continued automatically. So coming out of that image size dialogue, I didn't have to select anything in particular, it just kept running. There is our polaroid image effect, this time done on a second image. It works on different sorts of images. We've already proven that and now it has an additional stop in it. In the final video, we're going to have a look at creating an action that adds guides to an image which is going to be handy for graphic designers. The problem is there's a little bit of a hitch in making it. We're going to look at that in the next video.
7. Pt 6 - Guide Action and Wrap Up: The final action that we're going to write is going to be one that's very handy for graphic designers, and what it's going to do is it's going to add guides at 50 percent horizontal and 50 percent vertical. It's going to save you the effort of having to do that yourself. I'm going to close down the Polaroid one, close down the vintage look, go to "Helen's actions", going to click "New", and I'm going to call this guides, and I'm going to click "Record". I'm going to go "View", "New Guide". I'm going to make one at 50 percent vertical and one at 50 percent horizontal, and click "Okay". They are my guides in place. I'm just going to stop recording. I'm going to close this document. I'm going to create a brand new document that's going to be a different size to the one I just created. I'm going to make this 800 pixels wide, and I'm going to make it 200 tall. It has totally different proportions to the image that we used previously. Going back to my guides, I'm going to run the action. Immediately, you can see that there is a really big problem here with what should have been a blindingly simple action. This is not in the middle, and goodness only knows where our horizontal one went, but it can't even be seen, so let's close that down. Let's go and create a brand new document. We'll start with the one that we had previously. I think this is probably it. Now, before I get rid of this guides action because it didn't work, let's just have a look and see if we can see what the problem is. Well, a problem's going to be immediately apparent when we look inside what this guide says. It says make new guide position 489 pixels. Well, that's not what we told Photoshop to do. We said 50 percent horizontal and 50 percent vertical, and what it's gone and done is put them in into rigid positions, 489 pixels vertically and 344.5 pixels horizontally, so whatever we asked it to do, it was not listening when we asked. Let's get rid of that because it didn't work, but before we start to record the action again, since it didn't work last time, let's go to "Edit", "Preferences", and let's go to "Units & Rulers", and let's go and make our rulers "Percent" and click "Okay". Now, let's go to "Helen's actions", let's do a new action and let's call it guides, and click "Record". View, New Guide, Horizontal. You can see that percentage is already typed in here, so we're just going to type 50 horizontal, and then View, New Guide, Vertical 50, and click "Okay", and stop recording. Now let's have a look and see what's in here. Well, this time we've got a new guide at position 50 percent and one here at 50 percent, but we've got rulers set to percent and we don't want that to be the case. You know what, that's just fine. Let's go back into "Edit", "Preferences", now this would be Photoshop preferences on a Mac. We're going back to "Units & Rulers", and I'm going back to making my rulers pixels or whatever it was that they were before, so you're just resetting it back to what they were. Notice that nothing's changed with our action. The action is still phrased in terms of 50 percent, 50 percent. Now, let's go and create a new document that has totally different proportions to the one we just created. Let's go back to our 800 by 200 where we had that spectacular failure just minutes ago. I'll click "Create". Let's go back to our guides action and let's play it. This time we get exactly what we wanted. We've got guides at 50 percent horizontal and 50 percent vertical. That's just something that might trip you up occasionally, is that some of your settings that perhaps you want to phrase in terms of percent so that they can be used on any document irrespective of size, may fail because Photoshop may not accept the 50 percent or the percentage value that you're using, it may convert that to a regular value. If so, just go and change your units, record the action, and then go and change your units back, and the action will contain the exact information that you need in the future. Your project for this class is to do something with an action in Photoshop. You may want to go and find and download an action and run it on a image, and then you can just post a picture of the image in the class project area to show me what you did with your actions. If you want to go a step further and create your own action, then do just that. Tell me in the class project area what your action did and post an image of what the action did. If it's relevant, you probably wouldn't want to do one for guides, but if you did something like the Polaroid one, then just post an image of that as your class project. I'm just interested to see what you're getting out of this class in terms of what's going to be meaningful for you for working with actions in Photoshop. I hope that you've enjoyed this class and that you've learned something about working with actions in Photoshop, whether it'd be creating your own or just a method of being able to locate and use actions that you download from the web. As you're watching these videos, you will have seen a prompt which let you recommend this class to others. Please, if you enjoyed the class, do two things for me. Firstly, give it a thumbs up and secondly, write in just a few words why you enjoyed the class. These recommendations help other students to see that this is a class that they too might enjoy. If you'd like to leave a comment or a question for me, please do so. I read and respond to all of your comments and questions, and I look at and respond to all of your class projects. My name is Helen Bradley. Thank you so much for joining me for this episode of Graphic Design for Lunch, and I look forward to seeing you in an upcoming episode soon.
Helen Bradley, Graphic Design for Lunch™
