Simple PhotoShop CS Batch Action

[Tami]

This is a very simple tutorial for making a thumbnail image in PhotoShop CS.

Make sure your Actions Palette is showing on your workspace. If it\'s not, then go to Windows > Actions and click on it.

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Next, open an image to use for recording your action. I\'m going to use this one:

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Make sure you know exactly what steps you are going to use in your action, and that you can move through them uninterrupted, as the Actions Recorder will record every step until you click on the stop icon.

*Note, you can delete steps once your action is completed, if you do make a mistake. All you have to do is click on the incorrect step in the Actions Palette to select it, then click on the Delete Icon.*

To begin making a new action, click on the New Action icon in your Actions Palette:

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In the popup window, type in the name of your new action. In this case it will be Thumbnail. Click Record.

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This will make your new action show up in the Actions Palette:

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Next go to Images > Image Size

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Now put in your image settings and click okay to apply them to your image:

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Next, save your image, going through all the save options:

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**If you don\'t do the above steps before you stop recording, you will have to do them for each image your are resizing in your batch.

After you have completed the above steps, click the Stop Recording icon in your Actions Palette:

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Your action is now ready to be applied to a batch of files.

You can do one of two things:

1. You can open all of the files you want to resize (good if the images are in different folders)

or

2. You can open the folder of pictures you want to resize in PhotoShop\'s File Browser

I am going to use the File Browser:

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Once you have your folder selected, go to File > Automate > Batch

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Now we\'re going to pick our settings, which are fairly straight forward, just make sure the action you want is selected in the Action drop down menu:

*Note: Make sure Override SaveAs is checked*

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Select a destination folder. In my own opinion, it\'s better to save your thumbnails to a folder which is different from the source folder:

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Once you have all your settings ready, click the Okay button, and your action will be applied to the images you\'ve defined. After it\'s complete, go to File > Open > your destination folder, and all of your new thumbnails should be there.

If you have any questions, don\'t be afraid to post it here, even if you think it\'s a silly question.

I hope this tutorial was useful and helped you learn something new in PhotoShop CS. <img src=\'http://www.killanet.net/forum3/public/s ... /smile.gif\' class=\'bbc_emoticon\' alt=\':)\' />

[Josh]

*applauds* This is probably one of the most helpfull tutorials I have ever seen/read. I will be using this often from now on and not just the thumbnail one; I\'ll definatly be saving lots of time with editing lots of pictures (like watermarking and stuff) with this really nice function in Photoshop. Thanks!