How to Create and Use Your Own Professional Photoshop Actions 2021

Photoshop actions are created by manually performing a series of steps and recording them in an ATN file. Actions in photoshop can save a lot of time when you need to perform a task repeatedly in Photoshop. In today’s video, we show you how to create professional actions in photoshop from scratch.

How to Create and Use Your Own Professional Photoshop Actions

Today I have some tips for you so that you can create your own professional Photoshop actions. You will see how you can make your actions pop up a dialog to make adjustments as well as messages to let you know how to run your actions.

First, we’re going to take a look at what actions are and how to use them. On your menu bar here there is an icon for actions. And if you don’t see that icon, you can come up here to Window. And click on actions. And now we have our actions and each step that the action is actually taking. So Photoshop actions are an easy way to turn complex multi-step edits into a one-click process. Actions record your exact steps. They allow you to replay them. To repeat the same, edit across multiple photos. So that’s what actions are. Let’s see how we use Photoshop actions.

How to Use Photoshop Actions

In Photoshop, There are a set of actions that come with Photoshop. They’re called default actions. But you can get Actions on many websites. You may have to pay for them. Some may be free. But I’m going to show you how to load in one of those actions, so I come up here to Menu and there’s something called load actions. And so on. your computer you’re going to find a file with an ATN extension that is your Photoshop actions file. Just say open and that loaded my action. In my case, it says Photoshop actions demo.

So when in the actions panel let’s start off with an action that is supplied by Photoshop. In the actions panel, usually, an action is created in a folder. And under the default actions folder, there are actions themselves. Let’s choose wood frame. And if you twirl this arrow down, you see all the steps that this action is actually going to take all the different edits.

So if you highlight the action name. And, come down here to hit play selection. In this case we have a dialogue that pops up of course, our image is already 100 pixels wide and tall. More than that and say continue So this action did was supposed to do it. It created a wood frame around this image.

Besides being able to see the steps that the action is taking, you can actually go into history and see the names of the steps. In the history panel, and if you’re familiar with the history panel, you know that you can click in the history panel at different points to step back or go forward in the process. And if you want to start all over again and run a different action or run this action again, no need to delete everything out of the history panel. Just go to the very top. And select that step.

How to Create Your First Action

Let’s create a simple action. First I’m going to delete this action on the bottom that I had added earlier. And to delete it action all you need to do is highlight the action name and click on the trash can And now to create an action, you start with creating a new set. Which is this folder icon right here. Click on that and give your set a new name. Now you have a new set underneath.

You need to create your actions. Here is to create new action icon. Click on that Give you a new action, a name. I’m going to call this floor cleanup And this new action is in the Photoshop actions demo set And you can attach function keys to it and give the action colors. I’m just going to click on record.

So once I’ve clicked on record, Photoshop is going to record steps that I’m doing into my action. So I’m going to duplicate this background layer with command+J. As you can see, that step was recorded. I’m going to come up to the top and click on filter. Noise. And median, I’m going to choose a value of, 30 and click OK.

I’m going to hold down my alt key and click on the add new layer mask icon and select that layer mask and hit a D and that resets the Swatch is on the left-hand side of the toolbar where white is now my foreground color and black is my background color Then I’m going to stop the recording with this square icon right here.

Now we need to test my new action. I’m going to click on the history panel and click on the very top of the history panel. So that put me back to the beginning as if I just opened the file. Come back to the actions panel Highlight my floor clean-up action. And click. Play selection.

And now to work with this action, all I need to do is. Click on my layer mask, use my brush and clean up my background and that’s going to take care of most of the dirt or spots on the background will refine this in a second.

And if I want to add to this action or edit it, what I would do? Is click on the last step that I was on then click the record button and in this case I just want to add a new layer so Shift+OPT+CMD N. There’s a new layer if that’s all I wanted to do, I could say stop recording and say if I want to use my clone stamp on this layer to get these extra spots off of this background paper. Back here, I can press S or the clone stamp tool sample and paint that away.

So this is a good use of an action so you have a photoshoot where you had a lot of images where you needed to clean up the background paper on the floor and you need to do this to every image. You would just come up here to your actions panel. Click on your action and you wouldn’t manually have to repeat every step. When you first open an image to edit.

Here’s another tip, if you make a mistake while you’re recording your action, hit stop. Then go back and delete the incorrect step. Select the last correct step that you were on and hit record again.

How to Create an Action to Sharpen an Image and Make the Action Flexible

Now we’re going to make an action that is a little bit more complex. And I’ll show you a possible situation that you can run into and how we can overcome that. And make this action flexible.

Under my set Photoshop actions demo. I’m going to create a new action. And I’m just going to call it sharpen and say record. Since I’m going to sharpen this image, but I wanted to first is resize it. Then apply the sharpening. And we’re going to use high pass.

So I’m going to come up here to Image -> image size and I’m just going to type in 1080 for the width and say OK. Now I’m going to add a new layer Shift+OPT+CMD N. And at a stamp visible layer, shift+OPT+CMD E. I’m going to desaturate this image with Shift+CMD+U. And I want to change the blend mode to something like overlay. And, maybe change the opacity, but The thing is in this case. Every time I change the opacity. It’s recording it and I don’t want that. That kind of messes things up.

So here’s another tip. First, we’re going to stop the recording. Click the step that’s the error, or in this case I have multiple steps, so I’m going to click shift and select all of my steps that I need to delete. I’ve deleted them.

I had to put my blending mode back to normal my opacity, to 100 and I’m back on my desaturate step. Now click begin recording. If I double click on layer seven, I bring up the layer style. Now here’s where I have a little bit more freedom.

I can change anything in here. I can change my blend modes. I can see my preview. I do want this an overlay and see this time if I want to change my opacity or anything. It’s not recording it and I do want the opacity 100. At this point, I’m going to say OK. Then I can come up here to filter, other, high-pass. You know I’m going to bring this down just a little bit of sharpening. I’m going to say 1.1 for now and say OK and click Stop.

So here’s another tip. Anytime you’re recording your steps. Can you see things changing like for instance opacity or any kind of adjustment? By you making slight changes, you want to find another way to make that happen. In this case, double-clicking on that top layer to bring you the layer style we were able to make those changes.

Anything in that layer style. The opacity, blending modes and it doesn’t affect the recording until you say OK, so look for those opportunities to use a dialogue to make changes again, because you have the dialog box open, it doesn’t register those changes until you say OK.

So now it’s time to test my Photoshop actions. So if I go to my history panel, go all the way up to the top, and come back to my action, highlight it, click on my play selection, resize my image, And it sharpened it. Here is all of the steps that we recorded in the action resize image. New layer, stamp visible, desaturate. All the things we did

Now let’s make this action versatile. You saw how we chose the radius in the high pass filter. With this action every time you run it set the same radius. We want a way to make it flexible. In our Photoshop action, we’re going to come down to where it says high pass. And right next to the high pass step that we recorded something called toggle dialogue on-off like that.

We’re going to rerun the Photoshop action again. Then click on sharpen and click play it’s resizing the image. The Highpass dialogue comes up again. We can change our radius changes to 1.2 this time and say OK. So now we’ve made it more flexible.

The main tip here is if you’re using a filter like in this case, the high pass filter and you want to make the dialogue come every time you run it so that you can make it flexible and make a different adjustment every time you run your action right next to the high pass step. Click this box right here. Which will toggle on that dialogue so it’ll pop up. You can make your adjustment. And then continue your Photoshop actions.

How to Create an Action to Cut Out Your Subject – Make Your Action Non-Specific

Let’s create another Photoshop actions. And this time we’re going to run into another situation. So I’m going to come up to my same action set. Click on new action and name it CutOut Subject and say record and say command J+duplicate the background layer and I’m going to select one of my selection tools here because I want the select subject button at the top I’m going to click on that and I’m going to click on the add new layer mask icon at the bottom of the Layers panel and now I’m going to create a solid color adjustment layer and I’m going to choose a color and say OK.

I’m going to move it below. my “layer 1” which is the subject layer and I’m going to say stop recording. I want to test this and I’m going to go to the top of my history panel, come to my new action called, Cut Out Subject and Say Play So as far as creating helpful action. This is like a starting point if you wanted to cut somebody out of their background and using in a composite I could still go in here and refine my selection. So it’s a starting point or something like that.

There’s a possible problem here. When I was recording right here at this point right after I made to fill there and I. Clicked on it and moved it below the subject layer. It had this name here. Layer 1. What, if there’s another situation where there is no layer 1. So basically it was dependent on there being a layer one and me moving it that way. We want to get away from that. We want to make our These are Photoshop actions recordings of steps that were doing non-specific.

So what I’m going to do is I’m going to delete this step, move current layer and I want my history to be back at the start too. I’m going to hit record again. And now I’m going to press command and. Left [and so that moved that layer down and notice the language it used it says. Move current layer to previous layer, it didn’t name. A specific layer like layer 1.

Now I want to add another layer. On top of layer 1, which is the subject layer, but if I click into it you saw that it recorded select layer one. That’s something else we want to get away from, so there’s another way to do that which makes it non-specific. In other words, it’s not selecting a layer by name.

So I’m going to stop the recording. I’m going to delete my mistake. Say OK. And put this down where it was going to press record and this time I’m going to press the alt and my left [and it says select forward layer so it didn’t say select a specific layer by name it says said select forward layer.

And now it’s going to make another layer Shift+OPT+CMD+N and then I was going to clip it to my layer below OPT+CMD+G and so now I’m ready to stop my recording. Let’s test this again back to the beginning in history highlight my Photoshop actions, press play and so now I have a good start to cutting somebody out of the background.

So if I knew this was a project where I’m doing a lot of this, I can create this Photoshop action. I can click on my layer mask going to select and mask and refine my selection. I can use this layer here to do some more retouching or refining.

So the main goal here was not to click. Around on your layer panel. Use your keyboard shortcuts. To move your selections up and down, another tip to make your actions more flexible and give the person who’s running action some indication of what’s going to happen or instructions they need to complete the Photoshop action correctly when running it.

How to Add a Pop-up Message and a Pop-up Dialog to Your Action

So here this step right before it makes the. Color fill layer. I’m going to my menu and say. Insert, stop and say change. fill color and I’m going to make sure. Allow continuous checked. And say OK and automatically toggle this dialogue, and I want to toggle the color fill adjustment layer. So I’m going to come here to the top of my action and select it and say play.

So I created. A Photoshop actions dialog to ask me to change the fill color. I’ll say continue. Here’s my color fill layer. I can name it and now I can change the color and say OK, all in trying to make this flexible popup these dialogues to alert the person who’s running action. There’s something coming up they can make a choice to stop or continue and they can make an adjustment. These are Photoshop actions.

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