What Are Photoshop Actions?

Actions are a feature in Photoshop 6 and above, and Adobe ImageReady that record and play back most commands and tool operations as you work along in these applications.

An action is a series of commands that you can record and later play back. For example, you can create an action that adjusts the color to an image, followed by an Unsharp Mask filter that resharpens the detail, and a Save command that saves the file in the desired place on your hard drive, including the desired format.

You can also save actions as an 'icn' file, or save it as a droplet that can be opened by double-clicking it, or opening it from within a set of premade actions.

Actions can also include modal controls that let you enter values in a dialog box while playing an action.
Both Photoshop and ImageReady include a number of predefined actions. You can use these actions as is, customize them to meet your needs, or create new actions.

The Actions Pallet:

The Actions Pallet lets you organize, create sets of actions, record actions, and save the sets to your hard drive.

Open The Actions Pallet:

Navigate to the Photoshop/ImageReady menu and choose WINDOW > ACTIONS. You will see the Actions dialog box, shown below-

Make An Action Set: With the Action pallet open, click the small arrow located at the top-right corner of the pallet. Now select NEW SET in the pop-up menu. Now type a name for the new action set into the dialog:

From the same arrow in the upper right hand corner of the actions pallet, click the arrow and select NEW ACTION.

From the dialog that pops up, type in a new name for the action, and choose the new action set you created in the previous step.

Click RECORD. As you work in Photoshop your actions are being recorded until you click the STOP BUTTON shown in the Actions dialog below.

What would have taken up to 2 weeks or more, now only takes a few minutes with cover design software based on the power of Photoshop Actions.

Adobe Photoshop Basic Tools Tutorial