How to Running Actions in Photoshop

To run an action, select the action’s title in the Actions palette and click the Play button. You can also run an action by F/Ctrl+double-clicking the action’s title. Most actions can be applied only to an image that is already open; however, some actions may start out with steps that create new documents from scratch, such as the Letter, Tabloid, and Legal Canvas actions in Photoshop’s Production set. It is possible to run actions on multiple images that have not yet been opened in Photoshop, but this can be done only by using the Automate --> Batch command.

Toggle Dialog Box
By default, Photoshop does not display dialog boxes for any actions that you run. Instead, settings are applied without displaying any dialog boxes onscreen. However, it is possible to force Photoshop to stop an action and display a dialog box so that the user can enter specific settings before continuing. To do so, click in the second column of the Actions palette next to the step. This places a black dialog box icon next to the step, and a red dialog box icon next to the action’s title. Clicking a red dialog box icon displays a warning, which asks whether you’d like to add a stop to every step in the action. In most cases, adding that many stops is not what you would want to happen. When the warning dialog box appears, be sure to click Cancel, and be careful not to click a red dialog box icon in the future. You really want to click only in the blank column area next to a specific step in order to add a stop, or to click a black icon to remove the stop.