With most modern programs such as word processors and spreedsheets you can record a macro of oten used series of commands. Photoshop too has a macro function known as Actions.
In this tutorial I will show how to create and use a action that will convert a color image into a infra red one.
I am using an article found here as a guideline for doing the infrared conversion and I suggest reading the article first if you would like an understanding of the process.
The conversion process is fairly simple one, but it’s easy to forget if you don’t use it often, its for this reason that I decided to learn how to make a photoshop action out of it.
To get started make sure the actions window is displayed. If it’s not there choose Windows->Actions. You should now have a windows that looks something like this:
If you are just getting started with actions you may want to create your own set instead of the default, this gives you a convenient place to store your own actions. Sets are like sub folders on your harddrive and are created by selecting the little folder icon on the actions window.
Now to get started with the action, with the image you want to work on open, choose the ‘Create new action’ button on the actions window and fill in the appropriate fields. Once you hit ‘Record’ every button you press and every option you choose will be recorded.
Now you are ready to step through the article above, I will not show every step of the way – refer to the above article. A good idea is to always duplicate the working image before making any changes to it, I usually put this as my first step in the action by using the Image->Duplicate menu. As you do this notice how the step gets recorded in the action.
It is easy to make a mistake while recording a macro, and the usual undo command wont have the desired effect! Instead use the Edit->Step Backward command.
Once all the steps have been done and you have a desired image as result you can choose the stop button next to the record button on the actions window. At this point your action will be saved and ready for reuse.
Notice on the screenshot above the arrows pointing towards certain steps, if you click on these arrows you will see that even the values you chose were saved into the action.
Close the new IR image, you can save it if you wish, and now lets see the action create the exact same image again for us by making sure the original image is active and hitting the play button on the action – making sure you select the top most part of the action that says ‘Color 2 IR’.
You should now have a exact copy of the one you did manually, and all that in just a few seconds.
Something that you may have thought about is that the article says you need to adjust the values for the channels, blurs and faders based on the photo, but our action doesnt prompt us for any values. This is easily fixed as you can set each step that requires user interaction to show the original dialog when it gets to that step. Simply toggle the Toggle dialog on/off option next to each step.
In the above screenshot you can see that the channel mixer will now prompt for the desired values, repeat this for the other steps you want to customise.
One last good hint is to add a little dialog in the beginning of each action that will tell your user what its all about. You can do this by choosing the action, then hitting the little right-pointing arrow on the top right of the action window and choose Insert Stop. Now type in something like the text below, you can include your name and email address if you like and make sure the Allow Continue option is set. The action window also allow you to drag and drop steps around inside an action, so if you forget the stop in the beginning, dont worry, add it at the end and drag and drop it to the top of the steps.
Stop’s are also useful if you want to provide a early breakout from a action, like if you want to give the user the option to not do the Add Noise task of your action, you can prompt him using a stop prior to the step and give him the option to stop the whole action prior to the noise.
If you now run the action you will see the following
