Oculus Studios Blog

Using Actions!

If you find yourself repeating the same process on several images using Photoshop, why not create an action?

An action is an automated process which can save you an enormous amount of time if used correctly and it can be used for a variety of reasons.

Here is an example:

Let’s just say that you want to put a copyright symbol onto your image, this is easy to do and should take only a few minutes, if you had an action, it would only take a few seconds!

• Have your image opened up in Photoshop
• Make sure your “Actions” palette is showing, if not, go to: “Window > Actions” (Alt + F9)
• At the bottom of the Actions pallette, click on the icon next to the “Bin” icon to “Create a new action”
• Name the Action “copyright” and click “Record”, you are now ready to create your copyright action.
• Click on the “T” (text tool)
• Click on the image where you would like to put your copyright symbol
• Select your font and your font size, for colour, select black!
• Hold down the “Alt” key and type 0169, this will give you the © symbol which will be on a new Layer
• Press the “F7″ key on your keyboard which will reveal the Layers palette
• In the Layers palette, right mouse click on the copyright text layer and select “Blending Options”
• This will display the Blending options dialogue box for the copyright symbol
• Put a check in the box next to “Bevel and Emboss” then click OK
• Still in the Layers palette, change the Blending options from “Normal” to “Colour Dodge”
• Lower the “Opacity” to 50%
• Go back to the Actions palette by pressing “Alt + F9″ on your keyboard and press the “Stop Recording” button at the bottom of the palette
• You have now completed the Action for putting an embossed copyright symbol on an image
• Open another image in Photoshop
• In the “Actions palette, click on the action you have just created, then click on the play button located at the bottom of the palette

Hey Presto, a single click can now put an embossed copyright symbol on any image you open in the future just by playing this action!

Something to remember:

If you play this action on an image with a different resolution, the © symbol will be a different size

To rectify this

• Select the © layer in the layers palette
• Press “Ctrl + T” on your keyboard to allow you to resize the © symbol
• Hold “Shift” down and grab one of the corners to resize the © symbol (holding shift will maintain the aspect ratio of the layer you are resizing)
• When you are happy with the size, press “Enter”

Getting familiar with shortcuts can save hours of time!

Want to see what your image may look like in Black and White?

With your colour image open in Adobe Photoshop, press Shift + Ctrl + U

This will simply grayscale the image which will give you a quick idea how the image looks in Black and White.

Ctrl + Z will undo this change, then you can set to work on your chosen method of converting to a better Black and White image

Getting familiar with shortcuts can save hours of time!

Using the full screen can have it’s advantages when working on an image in Photoshop, sometimes the toolbars, header and footer get in the way.

Pressing “F” on the keyboard allows you to maximise the space available on the screen and pressing “TAB” hides the toolbars.

Cycle through the screen modes by pressing “F” and display the toolbars by hitting “Tab again.

Getting familiar with shortcuts can save hours of time!