Photoshop Actions and Batch Processing Workshop

Introduction

This is a "workshop" on Photoshop Actions and Batch Processing intended for webmasters who are not yet familiar with these exceptional productivity tools.It should not take more than 10 minutes to do the basic exercises and will potentially save many hours of work later. The third section of the workshop introduces some advanced techniques particularly relating to "smart" noise reduction, "smart" sharpening and advanced layer / channel manipulation. A beginner should have no trouble with these but they could potentially be of interest to advanced users also. The workshop is based on Photoshop 5.5 but it should also work for later versions. Any suggestions, comments, criticisms etc are welcome - either email Forest or put up a post on the Graphics BB.

I am a webmaster for Adult XXX sites so the images I use in the workshop are of a mildly Adult nature. If you are not for any reason legally entitled to view such images you must leave the site now.

Photoshop Actions and Batch Processing

In working with Adult sites we do a great deal of processing of images. Working with my own photos I typically like to

1. Adjust the colors.

2. Perhaps do some retouching (blurring areas, removing things with the pattern stamp etc)

3. If the images are suffering from noise due to low light or being digital video captures, do a noise-reduction / sharpen.

4. Select and crop the image.

5. Save the cropped and color adjusted photo full-size to my archive folder.

6. Resize the image for web use.

7. Perhaps sharpen with unsharp mask at the final size.

8. Add the site logo (a key protection from theft) and perhaps reposition it on the image.

9. Save the image "optimised for web" to my web-processed folder.

10. Close the original image without saving any of the above changes, so it can be reprocessed again.

Getting through a list like that can take a lot of time manually. Running it automatically for a single image - which is what the "actions" do, is GREAT. Running it automatically for 100 - 1000 images using Batch and Actions is ABSOLUTELY FANTASTIC. That's what I am going to help you to do.

There are three sections:

1. Working with Actions - getting a series of tasks done on a single image with a single click - and then dealing with situations where you want to tweak something in the middle of the process each time.

2. Batch Processing.- doing the same thing on as many images as you like. (Section 2)

3. Smart Sharpen / Noise Reduction - an example of advanced use of actions which you can begin using straight-away but which also provides a demonstration of advanced Photoshop techniques. (Section 3)

Workshop Set-Up

Download this zip file HERE (68Kb) and unzip to your C drive (not inside any other folder on C). It will set you up with the file structure shown in the diagram - everything being inside folder "apics".

Folder "process" contains the single photo "ws-photo.jpg" plus the four prerecorded actions you will use in the workshop.

When the actions are run they will put an optimised web-ready version of "ws-photo.jpg" in "done1", and a color adjusted high quality archive copy in "done2".It is not, of course, necessary to organise your work in this way, this just happens to be how the workshop's preloaded actions operate.

Task 1.1 - a basic actions run

1. Open Photoshop.

2. Go to your Actions Palette (a tab under the History Palette on the right of your page).

3. Click on that tab marked "1" in the screen capture on the right and select "Load Actions" from the drop down menu.

4. Load "Set 4a.atn" from your "process" folder (c:\apics\process\).

5. Make sure "Set 4a" is highlighted in blue just as in the diagramme, and that the leftmost box on that line is ticked with a black tick. If not click till the tick is removed and then click again for the tick to reappear in black.

6. Press the play button. You will be asked to select a file from the Process folder. Select "ws-photo.jpg". The image file will then be processed in a few seconds. When it is done, have a look at the three version you have in the Process (still the unaltered original), Done1 (web optimised with logo) and Done2 (full-size archived as high quality JPEG).

That's it. This is my original photo here and the processed photo here.

Task 1.2 - a basic run with tweak

You now wish to make an individual color adjustment tweak for your photos each time you run the action.

1. Find the "curves" line within Action 3, within Set 4a (if you can't see it as in the pic, you must open the set and action out using the triangular toggle to the left of the name - see the triangle pointing down behind Set 4a, if it is toggled in a closed position the triangle will point to the right).

2. Click on the empty box to the left of the curves line (just to the right of a box with a black tick). It should now look just as in the screen capture image.

3. Make sure Set 4a is highlighted in blue again and press play. Select "ws-photo.jpg" again.

4. You will now find the process stops with the image open and the curves filter open. Fiddle with the curves a bit, and when you are happy, click OK on the curves filter.

5. It will go on and archive and web optimise just as before.

6. That's it but before you continue, remove that tweak setting for curves (just click on it0 so that your action is back to normal again.

This is a very common way of working where for example you have a series of images shot in the same light conditions but each one needs just a little special attention. Most, but not all, actions can be individually tweaked like this.

Important Warning: actions don't mess around warning you that you are about to overwrite existing files when you save, they just do it - so every time you rerun this with the same file from "process" it will overwrite your existing Done1 and Done2 files unless you have renamed them or moved them. This doesn't bug me too much since I always retain an unchanged original in my process folder until I am satisfied with the final results.

Task 1.3 - messing with the image midway - inserting a stop

What about that Caesarian scar on the models tummy, and also the bad jaggies (caused by sharpening) on the CD rack. You want to stop somewhere through the process and mess with the image a little, apply a bit of blur here and there and get rid of that scar, then carry on.

1. Find the Action - Unsharp Mask (couple of lines below Curves), within "Set 4a / Action 3", and select it - so it goes blue.

2. Go to that same drop down menu you used in Task 1.1 to load the action, and this time select "Insert Stop". It doesn't matter what you name it.

3. You will see a new line "Stop" appears just below Unsharp Mask.

4. Now return your selection to the "Set 4a" line again and hit the "play" button.

5. The process will stop straight after unsharp mask with the image open. Now it's possible to run a broad-brush blur over the CD rack, and use the pattern stamp to remove that scar.

6. When you've finished messing, hit the play button and the action will complete itself as before. This is what I got here.

7. That's it, but, to continue remove that Stop. Just select it and hit the dustbin ikon on the bottom line. Gone.

Task 1.4 - permanently resetting one of the individual actions

Next you want to run the action with one parameter permanently reset within the set of actions. Previously your optimised images were saved at 600 x X pixels, now you want them all to be 650 x X pixels. You don't want to have to adjust every time like you did in the last task, you just want to change the embedded settings of the action itself.

1. Open an image in PS - use "ws-photo.jpg" as before.

2. Find the "image size" line (6 lines below curves). Double-click on it to open that action. You will find yourself in the Image resize menu box. Reset the vertical height to 650. Press OK.

[Warning - if you click OK without any changes you will find the image resize has been reset to 100% x 100% i.e. no-changes, and you will wonder why your web-processed images have not got smaller. So if you decide not to make a change, re-input the existing vertical height (if that is the control parameter) even though you are going to use the same figure and hit OK.]

3. You have now permanently changed the saved resize parameters in Set 4a. Now close the image without saving any changes to it.

4. Highlight Set 4a again and run the action on the original unaltered file. Done.

Task 1.5 - sometimes you need to delete and re-record instead of reset

Some settings cannot be changed along the lines of Task 1.4. In that case you need to delete the action or actions and re-record exactly what it is you want. The most common example of this is redoing the application and positioning of a text watermark on an image.

1. Open an image in PS - use "ws-photo.jpg" as before. Resize it to 600 vertical (what it will be when it hits the make text action).

2. Find the lines "make text layer" and "move layer" in "Set 4a". Highlight them and hit the dustbin icon. That's got rid of the old ones.

3. Now, highlight the action one above where you want to insert your text line (in this case "image size").

4. Hit the record button (to the left of play on the bottom line) - everything you do now will be recorded as a new action.

5. Insert your watermark text and position it where you want it on the page.

6. Press the stop button

7. Close your image without changes.

Done. You now have a new version of the action. Try running it.

Task 1.6 - switching bits of actions on and off

Maybe this time you do not want to do the color correction nor the unsharp mask. Easy, just click on the tick to the left of that line in the actions menu and when you are happy run the whole action. You will see it will just miss out steps without ticks.

Task 1.7 - making your own action set

You already pretty much know how to do this.

1. Click on the "new set" folder icon as in the screen capture.

2. Press record.

3. Record whatever it is you want within your new set of actions.

4. Remember to hit stop when you've finished.

Next

Most of the above comes through trying to do things but perhaps doing it will have saved you a couple of steps on the learning curve. I hope os. I am sure I do not know the best way to do everything so if you have a better way - tell me about it. Next on I will look at applying actions to many photos at one time HERE