For those of you who don't already know, Photoshop has these nifty little features called Actions. Now, these actions can be used for many things, including the creation of beautiful and eye catching effects, maximizing your productivity, or simply to carry out the tedious and mundane tasks that you just doesn't feel like doing.
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 you create an action you need it to do one thing, whatever that "thing" may be. In my case, I needed to change the Hue/Saturation for 80+ images from aqua to my "trademark" teal. You may need to create an action for a different purpose; however for now lets all agree we are going to change the Hue/Saturation. Now, to follow along you'll need something to work on. Grab a small image, like an icon.
Now go to Window - Actions and make sure it is checked. If it is, you should see a tab in the Layers Palette labeled, of course, Actions.
Click on the arrow button to expand the Actions menu and choose "new set." This creates a folder for the action you create (you don't necessarily need the folder, it simply helps with organization.)
Return to the Actions menu and choose "New Action." Before you begin to record an action you need to decide the steps you'll need to take and the order in which you'll need to take them. This is a pretty simple action and soon you will be able to do this is your sleep.
Next comes recording. Begin by clicking on the little circle icon in between the square and the triangle at the bottom of the palette. Once that is selected everything you do in Photoshop will be recorded until the end of action. If you do the wrong step no worries, simply stop the action by clicking the square icon and return to your last step.
For this tutorial, the first thing to do is change the Mode of the image to RGB, since .gif files are saved in Index mode which don't respond well to colorization. Go to Image - Mode - RGB with the Action recording.
Next, strip the image of the current color in order to apply our own color easier by going to Image - Adjustment - Desaturate.
Now that we have a naked grey image, we need to add some color. Make sure your action is still recording and go to Image - Adjustments - Hue/Saturation. I have the settings for my teal color saved in a .ahu (Hue/Saturation) file already so all I have to do is click Load and select Teal.ahu, but since you don't have that you'll have to use the sliders. Use these settings for my color:
Finally, we save it for the web. Check that your action is still recording and go to File - Save For the Web and set your file type and optimization settings. I use the customary GIF settings. Choose the destination directory and save.
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.
Begin by going to File -Automate - Batch and make sure the name of the Action Set you just made 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 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. Click OK once you have everything set to your liking..
Now you can sit back and watch your images color themselves because you're using Actions and Batch Processing to do your tedious work. - 16752
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 you create an action you need it to do one thing, whatever that "thing" may be. In my case, I needed to change the Hue/Saturation for 80+ images from aqua to my "trademark" teal. You may need to create an action for a different purpose; however for now lets all agree we are going to change the Hue/Saturation. Now, to follow along you'll need something to work on. Grab a small image, like an icon.
Now go to Window - Actions and make sure it is checked. If it is, you should see a tab in the Layers Palette labeled, of course, Actions.
Click on the arrow button to expand the Actions menu and choose "new set." This creates a folder for the action you create (you don't necessarily need the folder, it simply helps with organization.)
Return to the Actions menu and choose "New Action." Before you begin to record an action you need to decide the steps you'll need to take and the order in which you'll need to take them. This is a pretty simple action and soon you will be able to do this is your sleep.
Next comes recording. Begin by clicking on the little circle icon in between the square and the triangle at the bottom of the palette. Once that is selected everything you do in Photoshop will be recorded until the end of action. If you do the wrong step no worries, simply stop the action by clicking the square icon and return to your last step.
For this tutorial, the first thing to do is change the Mode of the image to RGB, since .gif files are saved in Index mode which don't respond well to colorization. Go to Image - Mode - RGB with the Action recording.
Next, strip the image of the current color in order to apply our own color easier by going to Image - Adjustment - Desaturate.
Now that we have a naked grey image, we need to add some color. Make sure your action is still recording and go to Image - Adjustments - Hue/Saturation. I have the settings for my teal color saved in a .ahu (Hue/Saturation) file already so all I have to do is click Load and select Teal.ahu, but since you don't have that you'll have to use the sliders. Use these settings for my color:
Finally, we save it for the web. Check that your action is still recording and go to File - Save For the Web and set your file type and optimization settings. I use the customary GIF settings. Choose the destination directory and save.
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.
Begin by going to File -Automate - Batch and make sure the name of the Action Set you just made 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 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. Click OK once you have everything set to your liking..
Now you can sit back and watch your images color themselves because you're using Actions and Batch Processing to do your tedious work. - 16752
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