Examining an Action in List Mode in Photoshop

Try this quick practice run to see exactly how the Actions palette works:

1. Display the Actions palette in List mode.
If you’re in Button mode, click the palette pop-up menu arrow and select Button mode to untoggle the option. You need to be in List mode to create an action.

2. Expand the Default Actions folder, and click the right-pointing arrow next to the name of the action.

3. Click the right-pointing arrow next to the step you want to change.
The step expands to show the parameters used for that step. For example, for the Vignette (Selection), the layer is filled by using white at an opacity of 100 percent and by using the Normal fill mode.

4. You can click in the dialog box column for several of the steps (Make Snapshot, Feather, Make Layer, and Fill). You can select or deselect this column for a specific step to control whether the dialog box for that step is displayed.
For example, with the Vignette (Selection) action, if you deselect all the boxes in the dialog box column except for the one next to Fill, the action proceeds without input from you until it reaches the Fill step. Then the Fill dialog box pops up, and you can change settings such as the fill color, opacity, and fill mode. You can also click in the dialog box column next to the action’s name to turn on or off all the marked dialog box steps in the macro.