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If you weren't already aware, Photoshop has these great features called Actions. Actions can be used for many things, including doing the mundane tasks you don't feel like doing, creating amazing effects, and maximizing productivity.
I recently had the pleasure of a little thing called Batch Processing. I'm a dedicated designer, but there was no way I was going sit in front of my computer for hours changing the Hue/Saturation for every single image for my forum. What is Batch Processing, you say? Well, it's something that processes a batch,and I'm going to show you how to do it.
When creating an action, you need it to produce the same one result. Let's imagine an example of changing the Hue/Saturation in 100+ photos from bright red to a rose tone. You might need an action to serve another purpose, but let's stick to this Hue/Saturation idea for this tutorial. Now pick a small image such as an icon and we'll continue.
Now go to Window - Actions and make sure it that it is checked. If it is, you should see a tab in the Layers Palette labeled Actions.
Click on the arrow button to open the Actions menu and go to "new Set." This will create a folder for your action (you don't really need the folder, it just helps with organization.)
Now go back to the Actions menu and choose "New Action." Have an idea of the steps you'll need to take and their order before recording an action. Since this is a fairly simple action, you will master this in no time at all.
Now for the recording part. There will be a small circle icon between the square and the triangle at the bottom of the palette that you will need to click. Now Photoshop will record everything you do until the end of the Action. If you have an error, simply stop the Action by pushing the square icon and go back to your last step taken.
For my action, the first thing I need to do is change the Mode of the image to RGB, since .gif files are saved in Index mode which don't take too kindly to colorization. So with the action recording, go to Image - Mode - RGB. Now take a look at your Actions palette, it should look like this:
Next, we need to remove the image of it's current color to make adding our own color easier to apply, so go to Image - Adjustment - Desaturate.
You should see a naked grey image and so we need to add some color. Make sure your action is still recording and go to Image - Adjustments - Hue/Saturation. It helps to have the settings for color saved in a .ahu (Hue/Saturation) file so all you have to do is click Load and select Teal.ahu. If you don't have a file saved you can simply use the sliders.
Woo, we've now SunBlinded the icon! All that's left to do now is save it for the web. Is your action still recording? Good. Go to File - Save For The Web and set your file type and optimization settings. I use the standard GIF settings, but whatever floats your boat, dude. Select your destination directory and save. If your Actions palette looks like this:
Now you can press the square button on the actions tab and stop recording. To put your newly created action into action, we'll need to do a Batch Process. A batch process will take all the images in a specified directory and apply whatever changes were recorded in the action.
Go to File - Automate - Batch and make sure the name of the Action Set you just created is in the first dropdown list and the name of the Action is in the second. Set the third dropdown box (next to Source) to Folder and use the Choose button to find your duplicated or created folder of images. For destination, you can either leave it set to it's default "None" to have the action applied and saved in the source folder, or save the "actionized" images into a separate folder. Once you have everything configured to your liking, click OK.
Now you can sit back and watch your images color themselves because you're using Actions and Batch Processing to do your tedious work.
I recently had the pleasure of a little thing called Batch Processing. I'm a dedicated designer, but there was no way I was going sit in front of my computer for hours changing the Hue/Saturation for every single image for my forum. What is Batch Processing, you say? Well, it's something that processes a batch,and I'm going to show you how to do it.
When creating an action, you need it to produce the same one result. Let's imagine an example of changing the Hue/Saturation in 100+ photos from bright red to a rose tone. You might need an action to serve another purpose, but let's stick to this Hue/Saturation idea for this tutorial. Now pick a small image such as an icon and we'll continue.
Now go to Window - Actions and make sure it that it is checked. If it is, you should see a tab in the Layers Palette labeled Actions.
Click on the arrow button to open the Actions menu and go to "new Set." This will create a folder for your action (you don't really need the folder, it just helps with organization.)
Now go back to the Actions menu and choose "New Action." Have an idea of the steps you'll need to take and their order before recording an action. Since this is a fairly simple action, you will master this in no time at all.
Now for the recording part. There will be a small circle icon between the square and the triangle at the bottom of the palette that you will need to click. Now Photoshop will record everything you do until the end of the Action. If you have an error, simply stop the Action by pushing the square icon and go back to your last step taken.
For my action, the first thing I need to do is change the Mode of the image to RGB, since .gif files are saved in Index mode which don't take too kindly to colorization. So with the action recording, go to Image - Mode - RGB. Now take a look at your Actions palette, it should look like this:
Next, we need to remove the image of it's current color to make adding our own color easier to apply, so go to Image - Adjustment - Desaturate.
You should see a naked grey image and so we need to add some color. Make sure your action is still recording and go to Image - Adjustments - Hue/Saturation. It helps to have the settings for color saved in a .ahu (Hue/Saturation) file so all you have to do is click Load and select Teal.ahu. If you don't have a file saved you can simply use the sliders.
Woo, we've now SunBlinded the icon! All that's left to do now is save it for the web. Is your action still recording? Good. Go to File - Save For The Web and set your file type and optimization settings. I use the standard GIF settings, but whatever floats your boat, dude. Select your destination directory and save. If your Actions palette looks like this:
Now you can press the square button on the actions tab and stop recording. To put your newly created action into action, we'll need to do a Batch Process. A batch process will take all the images in a specified directory and apply whatever changes were recorded in the action.
Go to File - Automate - Batch and make sure the name of the Action Set you just created is in the first dropdown list and the name of the Action is in the second. Set the third dropdown box (next to Source) to Folder and use the Choose button to find your duplicated or created folder of images. For destination, you can either leave it set to it's default "None" to have the action applied and saved in the source folder, or save the "actionized" images into a separate folder. Once you have everything configured to your liking, click OK.
Now you can sit back and watch your images color themselves because you're using Actions and Batch Processing to do your tedious work.
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