PS Action question

[kpiela]

Hi there. Can anyone help me? When creating a new action, how do you put a "pause" in for selection sections of the photo, etc?

Thanks!

[Damo77]

Kristine, you can only pause to manually make adjustments inside a dialog eg levels. You can't pause to make a selection.

For this, I make two actions. For example, the first one is F10, does a few things, and ends with a message eg "Make selection then Shift F10 to continue". Then the second action (shift F10) finishes off my process.

[kpiela]

Damo, problem is, I don't know what that means! When I've used other actions, it will say something like "adjust levels then continue" So you're saying I should start recording the action, hit f10 when I want to put in a dialog box then f10 to close it and continue?

Sorry! I've never done it before and I'm curious! Thanks.

[René Damkot]

Not sure what you want to achieve really...
I usually use an action thru the Image Processor, and use bridge to select the images.

(Bridge > Tools > Photoshop > Image Processor)

What Damo is saying is make two actions.
One gets keyboard shortcut F10, and displays a message when finished. The second gets keyboard shortcut shift-F10 (or whatever you want)

[Damo77]

When I've used other actions, it will say something like "adjust levels then continue"

Yes, that's what I was talking about. That's just a simple pause-for-manual-adjustment inside the action. You'll make your levels tweak, then press OK, and the action will continue playing. It's possible to have numerous pauses in the one action - eg Levels, then Hue/Sat, then Photo Filter, etc, etc. The point is, all of those things are inside dialog boxes.

However, if you want to use a tool from the toolbar, that can't be done in an action. So you need two actions. Let's look at an example.

Example: You have taken a hundred headshots. All have a bit of a yellow cast, and some red-eye. (I'm not suggesting you would be clumsy enough to take a hundred photos with red-eye, it's just for the exercise). All photos need a Levels adjustment for contrast, a Curves adjustment for cast correction, red-eye correction using Hue/Sat, and sharpening.

1. Choose "New Action" from the Actions palette menu. Call it "Pics part 1", and assign it the F10 key (you don't need assign function keys to actions, but it helps for speed). Press "Record"

2. Now choose "Insert Menu Item". Choose Levels from the Image menu.

3. Do the same for Curves - choose "Insert Menu Item", then choose Curves from the the Image menu.

4. Now from the Actions palette menu, choose "Insert Stop". Make a note for yourself to select the eyes.

5. Now choose "Stop recording" (or press the stop button at the bottom of the palette). Your first action is complete.

6. Make a new action, call it "Pics part 2" and assign it the F11 key.

7. Insert menu item - Hue/Saturation (this will be for the red-eye correction)

8. Insert menu item - Unsharp Mask.

9. Insert menu item - Save As.

10. Stop recording.

Ok, so now you've got the two actions. When you open your first photo, press F10. It will allow you to make your Levels adjustment, then your Curves adjustment, then tell you to select the eyes. Once you've selected the eyes (with QM, or lasso, or whatever), you press F11, for the second action. That will bring up Hue/Sat so you can correct the eyes, then Unsharp Mask, then Save As. Done!

I probably should have PM'd you all this - it makes pretty boring reading. Let me know if you have any problems.

Cheers.

[kpiela]

Hey thanks Rene and Damo. Damo, I appreciate you taking the time to explain that to me. I didn't realize you could assign function keys this way. But don't be so sure I wouldn't take 100 photos with red eye. Maybe not red eye, but certainly underexposed! Thanks again!