Automate Boring, Repetitive Stuff?

Go under the Window menu and choose Actions to bring up the Actions panel. This is Photoshop’s built-in tape recorder, where we basically record boring, repetitive tasks, and then have Photoshop automate the process by playing them back for us super-fast. To create a new recording (or action, as it’s called in Photoshop), click on the Create New Action icon at the bottom of the Actions panel (it looks the same as the Layers panel’s Create a New Layer icon). In the New Action dialog, name your action, then assign a Function Key (F-key on your keyboard) to it, so this repetitive task can launch anytime you press that F-key. You’ll notice that this dialog doesn’t have an OK button, but instead, has a Record button. When you click that button, it starts recording, and now, as you do things in Photoshop, it records those steps exactly as you do them. When you’re done, click on the Stop Recording icon at the bottom of the Actions panel (its icon looks like a square), and then it’s a good idea to test the action to make sure it recorded correctly by clicking on the Play Selection icon at the bottom of the panel (it looks just like any other play icon). Now, it’s helpful to know that the Actions panel won’t record every single thing you could possibly do in Photoshop. For example, it doesn’t record brush strokes made with the Brush tool, so it’s not really for creating art—it’s for automating those boring, repetitive tasks that you sometimes do on a daily basis. By the way, Photoshop comes with a few sets of design actions that you can access from the Actions panel’s flyout menu. Click on the little icon in the top right, and you’ll see a list of actions you can load at the bottom of this menu (as seen above right).