Graphics Zone - Actions

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Making Your Own Action

by BarryHilton, Adult NetSurprise

In this tutorial we'll go through all the steps you need to know for making your first Photoshop Action! Actions are one of Photoshop's most useful devices, by designing your own actions, you will increase your productivity, finish repetitive jobs quicker and never forget how you made that great effect last week!

Before you start working on your action you need to get everything ready that you need. In our example we do not need our action to start a 'new' image, so we'll begin with making a new image 300 pixels wide by 100 pixels deep, with a white background.

Now we can get to work with our action! Photoshop actions record everything you do to your image. This means that you can replay the same effect or sequence over again at a later date. First, open your Actions menu by clicking on the Window menu at the top of the screen and select Show Actions.

Next, make your new action by clicking on the

button at the bottom of the Actions menu. This will bring up the New Action box, we will label our action 'My First Action', then click Record... from now on everything you do will be recorder to your Action.

1) Start by resetting your swatches by clicking on the small black and white boxes to the bottom left of your color selector on the main tool menu.

2) Next select the Text Tool and type 'TEST'. In our example we've used the Arial font, bold and 60 pixels high.

3) Next, right click on the 'Test' text layer in the Layers menu and select 'Rasterize Layer'. This will allow us to apply some effects to our text layer.

4) Now we'll add some effects... First, go to the Filters menu at the top of the screen, select Stylize, then Diffuse... Leave the mode set to Normal and click OK.

5) Next, we'll add a blur to our text... Go to the Filters menu at the top of the screen and select Blur then Motion Blur... Enter values of 0 Angle and 10 Distance.

6) Lastly, we need to be able to edit our text each time we run our Action. To do this click on the 'Empty' box to the left of the 'Make Text Layer' in the Actions menu. Then click the

button at the bottom of the Actions menu to stop recording your action. You should be left with the image below...

7) Now you can run your Action and repeat this effect as many times as you want! And you can apply the same effect to any Text you type... Click the

button at the bottom of the Actions menu... The font cursor will pop-up automatically so you can enter new text information... When you've typed your new text just click the 'Make Text Layer' in the Actions menu to continue applying your effects...

Experiment with the many uses for Actions in your daily work, from automatically reducing photos to thumbnails to complicated text effects... And have fun :)

And you can download many Actions for Free at the Adult NetSurprise GraphixZone!