Creating a New Action in Photoshop

The hardest part about creating a new action is figuring out what functions you want to automate.
Think about steps that you carry out over and over, and whether you could be more productive if you had an action that could do them for you. Then, examine the actual steps you want to automate so that you can record them. After that, creating a new action involves little more than starting Photoshop’s macro recorder and carrying out the steps you want to include in the action. You might want to create your own action to reduce images to a constant 500 pixels wide for display in an eBay auction, for example. Or you might want to save a bunch of files in a particular format or convert them from RGB color to grayscale.

Here are the steps to follow to create a new action:

1. Open an image.
2. Display the Actions palette in List mode.
3. Click the Create New Action button at the bottom of the Actions palette.
You can also choose New Action from the palette pop-up menu.
The New Action dialog box opens.
4. In the Name text box, enter a name for the action.
5. From the Set pop-up menu, choose the actions set. If you have more than one actions set open, choose the actions set in which you want to place the new action.
You may want to associate the action with a button on the keyboard.
Function keys like F2, F3, and so on are very useful for actions you perform all the time.
6. To associate the action with a function key shortcut, choose the name of the function key from the Function Key drop-down list.
Select the Shift or Control (Ô on the Mac) check box to use either of these keys along with the function key.

Any keyboard shortcut you assign to an action overrides the default function already assigned to the keyboard shortcut. You can revert to the original shortcut by choosing Edit➪Keyboard Shortcuts.

7. From the Color drop-down list, select a color to mark your action in Button mode.
This option enables you to group related actions by color.
8. Click the Record button in the New Action dialog box to begin recording.
9. Carry out all the steps you want to record.
10. Click the Stop Playing/Recording button at the bottom of the Actions palette to finish the action.
Your new action appears in the Actions palette in both List and Button modes.