Lessons

Lesson Info

Automation & Example Projects

Well, this sect section of this course I'm calling automation but on some level I would say that a lot of things we talk about our forms of automation they're just not the ones most we will think of because to me automation is anything that's quicker than the alternative so if for example making a text layer into a smart filter and then running a filtered oozing out of the text to me that's in a way a productivity enhancer because compared the alternative of rast arising and doing it all over again so that to me a lot of what we talked about up until now has been a form of automation just because of the nature of the beast but having said that there are some topics that are really are considered true automation in photo shop so the couple things I always like to talk about it first when we talk about automation is many people assume is I those words come out automation they think actions and actions are a form of automation photoshopping we'll touch on that but there's two things that ...

I worry me when I talk to people and as I mentioned earlier session I often go to like a corporate location they show me how they work and I try to come up with ways toe make their life simpler and very often I hear something that concerns me a little bit and that is they say, well, we don't really automate things that much, because everything we do is different, or we can't automate the entire process and my thinking as well, could you automate half of it because you think you can do some things faster? That's still better than nothing, and I think there's a misconception of many people that if you can't automate a dizzy, then don't do it. I'm thinking, hey, if I could go eight h or even eight a g or, you know, whatever part of the way there that's still better if I and I might the phrase always uses compared to the alternative, if the alternative was opened five files and manually dragged him in tow. One document as opposed to have full shop, do that part for you. You have to spend another hour masking it still has saved me time, so that's kind of the first thing. The other thing is that when we talk about actions, it doesn't have to be this full blown, lengthy procedure with multiple operations. That could be a simple as here's something I do all the time and photo shop, and I can't give it a keyboard shortcut, so I could still make it faster by making an action, so we'll talk about that as we go, all right, so the next important thing to note is when you go to use the built in there's a lot of built in automated features and photo shop and you can access almost all of them through from two different ways from within photoshopped or from within bridge almost all of the ones if I go to any of these automated commands in here with a few exceptions for example, if I go to do ah, I don't know let's just do that's really matter anyway photo emerge just so I have something the first thing it says is where would what files would you like to use? So now I have to go looking for them and more importantly, I have to look through a folder full of dmc underscore four, five, seven, two, three, four five seven to four and then they like which one is which so for me personally, I just find it easier most of the time toe look in bridge and go that one that one that one and do it visually so for me that's the number one reason why I generally as much as I can starting photo shop because then our excuse me and bridge because then I can visually say these are the ones that I want in some cases some of these built an automated features on ly work to the entire folder so when you do it from within photo shop, you say, which folder would you like to apply this to? Well, I'm thinking only want half of the files in that folder that's when I started bridge so there's nothing actually wrong at all with doing accessing these automated features from within photoshopped, but you just have to keep that in mind that sometimes a little more challenging. So even people who don't really use bridge a lot use light room or just use photo shop itself. This is what I would say photoshopped or keep saying that, sorry, bridge, it could be a help, because now I'm narrowing things down, saying, let me look inside this folder very similarly named files and figure out which one is it that I want to use or which ones? So if I wanted to an automated command, I might go through and say this one command or control this one, I don't have to it literally conduce do here and then not now. I'm just doing it based on visual as opposed to file names so that's kind of across the board, no matter what kind of automated feature your using, this is a way to do it very easily. Now, I need to thank jim for setting me up here in a bad way, because he said, every time he comes, he does new stuff. Well, I've used this before, because it's, the best example I have so sorry if you've seen it before, but so here's, the scenario, this was when I was on a trip to italy, and people think I'm joking when I say this bill actually took these photographs, thinking all this would make a good tutorial, which I don't normally do when I'm traveling, but this one, I thought I could use this, so I wanted to take a photo. I thought this was kind of need with this church through this little archway, but it was a very busy spot, so I'm just showing this as a preview and bridge, and I just stood there for a couple of minutes, and every so often I'd go to take a photo, and there was, as you can see, people moving, and I'm going to say that I and I also deliberately moved my camera slightly between each photo, I'm going to just claim that not that I apparently can't hold my camera. Still, I didn't have a tripod, but that's kind of point I deliberately wanted to show you don't need to, so as I have all these photos in an ideal world I'd like to say well let me combine this one with a few less people in that one with no people and so I'm thinking the first thought as well what if I combine these all into one image and then started sort of selectively masking from this one? So ultimately the masking part might take me a while so I'd like to cut to the chase and say but let me at least automate the first part of getting these into one document these air all raw files so the first they have to do is open one of the raw file and make it look the way that I want so I make adjustments to it however I want you know, whatever settings once I'm happy with it then I clicked done because I have four or five others and remember humming it's for I don't want to open this I just want to say in effect record what I just did or keep track up so when I do something in camera and click done it just means now that one has been adjusted these other ones haven't so rather than night and there's only five of them so I could have open them all at the same time but frankly it's just sometimes easier to adjust the first one then you select the rest right or control click and shoes developed settings previous conversion and then it will go through and make the rest of them the same. That is particularly nice if you have forty five or fifty images not just three or four so I would do that first because ultimately when I get these into a photoshopped document don't have to worry about do they look the way I want I just want and besides the fact is very important this automated function as nice as it is it does not bring them in as camera smart objects so it's more important this case to make sure they're looking the way I want at first glance so then I use a command called load files into photoshopped layers and will automatically create a new document and put each one of these onto its own layer using however I left this in my camera setting which is why did the camera first so I want to make sure they look the way I wanted to so this is the first part of kind of the automatic part is it's going to bring them all into one document which compared to the alternative me going open this one open this one over this one drag drag drag drag drag? This is a whole lot faster in this particular command it just does exactly what the name says it loads them in and you can see it clearly demonstrates my inability to hold my camera still because I look at all these layers you can see they're all over the place but this is another one of these built in commands which is really quite magical because I can select all my layers and have photos automatically align them for me this is one of these commands when it came out I thought well that's kind of neat about wait a minute that's actually really could because in the past out of sat there with individual layers and gone transformed this one now transformed that wanna manually what relieves the on ly option now we select them all and I always only semi jokingly say that and as you would expect because it's called auto line layers it's under the edit menu not like they maybe layer but anyway that's just me auto align layers it brings up this dialog box for anyone that's ever done a photo emerged this looks very familiar because it's basically exactly the same I usually start by just saying auto don't try anything else is try it and this intention this is simply to try and look at these layers and make them all lined up and I would I'm amazed by this technology because in a matter of whatever that was three seconds now when I look at it you'll see me look at the church it doesn't move so even though other things and sometimes it's had to shift things I'm missing some information when I combine them all together, I've got the key part, which is the church and part of the archway in exactly the same place now, depending on the version of photo shop you have, if you have something other than like, say, c s six would be a version but there's a there used to be a version called extended now, it's just kind of part of fotos open cc if you don't have that, then this would be start the emanuel process of okay, let me try toe mask this one on this layer of masters one was there, so I'm not going to do that because it would take too long and b I have a version that means I don't have to do that, but even if you did that process of those two steps of auto load, the layers and auto align them still has saved a lot of time and that's what I mean by partial automation is even you can do the whole thing that's still better, so I'd like to show that as an example because some people get stuck in this habit didn't do the whole thing for me, I know, but that's still pretty darn good now I would normally say, ok, I need to crop this and all that kind of stuff, but I want to show you this little thing that's it's pretty interesting it doesn't work all the time and that's why frankly I use this one because I know this works as a really good example of this technology take all these layers and I convert them to a smart object which at first we like how is that going to help me? Because now I can't do any individual masking or anything cause there one set of layers all come in protest into this smart object but the reason I did that is there is a function under smart objects called stack moz and these stack modes are were I think designed for rocket scientists and people with phd degrees because when you look at the names of stack moments there like entropy curtis is maxim median range skewed nous like ok, well thankfully a couple of people went through and said, hey, you know what this works pretty well and usually it's either maximum or mean now keep in mind let me before I do this let me remind you what I had five separate photos where each photo there were people moving slightly different. I would think it would be great if I could just clone all those people out of there but this does it mostly for me it just takes them out because it compares all the layers said let me find the on ly things that remain constant and remove everything else for you sometimes and that's why I use this image it works really well other times you get kind of weird ghostie things happening but I'm still happy because now it's get me that much closer to my end result sometimes it the the sack mode that I find works is maximum a lot of the time people talk about using mean or, you know there's different one there's like two or three that work seemed the best other times you'll try to like hey, I didn't work at all so I don't want to in any way sell this is old my gosh it's fantastic it works all the time but as you saw it took twenty seconds to try now I don't want to again make this sound too great because let's look a little closer, shall we? I say removed the people it's kind of like well, kind of except we've got some appendage there I know what that is in a couple of floating heads and so some people we're perfectly still throughout the whole thing so they're in every photograph. But if you were somewhere for example where and here's the I think I took these photos over the course of thirty seconds if I put my camera on a tripod and went click and then waited five minutes, then click so there was much more movement I've seen examples where it cleared things out completely because there was enough time in between and everything was moving cars, whatever it is, it can do a pretty amazing job. And even in this case, the little floating heads and things I could still go in a golden aiken calling that out it's still faster than the alternative. So this is an example, that kind of thing where don't be afraid to try something? Because, you know, it doesn't completely work it's still might get you much, much closer than you have knew the whole thing by hand, and I'm sure I told this story last time, but it's, my my favorite story. You know, canadians there have this well deserved reputation for being the politis people in the world. Well, I have been using this photo for quite a while, and I thought, I need a new photo now syria's of photos, I happen to be in vancouver and right where the olympic flame from the olympics a couple years ago. It's a really busy spot right down type model, this will be great because all these people so I sat down on a band, I didn't have a tripod, so I'm sitting like this trying to keep my camera really still, and I took one photo and I'm waiting for all the people to cross in front, and I'm just saying they're going what's going on I put my phone down on all these people are standing there waiting for me to take a picture no one stepping in front because they're so polite I'm like no actually I want you to move in front and they were like you finished yet and I'm like never mind so people said and get any photos out of that experience but so anyway, this is one of these things where that's pretty darn cool some of the time other times you're trying to go ok? They didn't work at all I mean, I've had some times where I had high expectations I tried downs like that's kind of weird now it's got just weird ghostie things all over the place, but um why not try it? If it can save you that much time into a little bit of tweaking, I would say that would be a pretty good thing even if that doesn't work. Still the first part of saying load his layers auto align still saves me time because there was a little symbol over to the right of the stacked images and I was curious what that wass um well I already closed it we're not sure what what it was it was probably just meant that that something had changed so that you would know that you could go back in and readjust the staff because it is a smart object so you could probably go back and try a different stack mode that's probably what that was was indicating that that was available to try a different one to see what it would do and I'm sure all those other stack modes like entropy and curtis is or have some particular function I just don't know what they're for, but just by the way another example, I saw that sometimes I thought was really smart if someone had saw this beautiful mural on a wall and it had a no parking sign like right in the middle, so they moved their cameron took one photo here and one just enough of a difference that when they started doing that it kind of got rid of a good portion of it because it kind of blended together enough to say, well, the wall is consistent and the sign isn't that kind of thing so there's lots of possibly is that air again worth trying because hey, why not? If it saves you time now up until now even though on one great graciously gave people their ability get their plug in, I've avoided any discussion of anything you have to add on to photo shop but here's one that's kind of cool and it's free it's a on ability to automatically add water marks to your photos now later on we talk about actions you could in theory record in action that says I want to put something but anyone who's tried it knows actions are very specific when you record in action to put a graphic it'll put in that place on that size of photo now of sudden if you have a tall photo versus a wide one all bets are off. So people who have tried to end up taking making like multiple photos for this to work so this is a, um, free oh that's interesting think I just hit quit instead of, um switch anyway, so I'll just talk about this as it's relaunching its from russell brown's go to russell brown's web site, which is russell brown dot com hey has a siri's of add ons to photo shop and one of them is called water mark or it may be called technically adobe watermark and it has a hole how do you install it kind of thing and full instructions and if you run into problems there's some text on how to fix it. But ultimately in theory at least it should just go here you go, here's my, um watermark and where you find it, it doesn't appear anywhere at first you look under window extensions and then you will see this water mark now just to give fair warning um this may or may not be usable in the near future so at the moment, it works, but I can't say whether it will one hundred percent as things change, but one of things I love, this kind of thing where this was built, where even you've never seen it before, you could use it because it tells you, step one, do this step to do that. So it kind of walks you through the process when you've never seen this before. It's a little ad plugging now, what I recommend is the reason for using this is to say, I've got x number of images that I all want to water mark, but first I'm gonna do it toe one image, make sure it works, and then applied to the rest that I want to that whole thing, and then find that didn't work. So one of the things I liked about this it lets you do a test run first taken kind of see, is this what I want? So step number one is, what would you like to use? You want to use a logo? If so, you want to select it, or do you want to use a text entry where you put a text that says copyright, blah, blah, blah, so let's, try and find a logo here, uh, see where that think it was in here, and it can be a psd file can be a j peg khun b, adobe illustrator file I mean, it's really quite a lot of options in there, and then you say, well, what damage do you want to use it on? And my suggestion at first you just choose use open images, and even though it says images plural, I would start with just one just to make sure it works. So there's going to be kind of like my preview image, and then and this is the most important part and the hard part that's so hard everywhere else is, where do you want to put it? How big do you want it? How? See through do you want it? And this is the part that usually causes people grief when they're trying to make their own automated feature and actions is, how do you position something? And how do you change it? So this one is going to be relative to the document a matter how tall or wide or big or small it is. So you have all these choices I'm gonna say let's put it, uh, center bottom as far as these other things go, you know what? I don't not really sure yet, so I'm just gonna hit preview and have it go through and say okay, so when I said center bottom apparently it's still interpreting that saying but temperley them to cover her face okay, there we go so that's a little big to me and a little bit too obvious so I would say let's scale it daddy further thirty percent and make it eighty percent capacity and hit preview so that's more what I had in mind so the the idea is you would go through each time hit preview and all it's doing is craziness little preview documents you can see is that what you had in mind once you do, then I would say okay, now that I know what's working, go back to step to and say but I'm due to hold folder full of him and then when you run it it will you'll end up with a serious and this is the onley kind of catch is the only option is j peg, you can't say, well, give me a psd with layer so this is really should be called watermark on j peg or something because that's but that's okay, if you know that I've preserved my original files going make new folder full of j picks, they're already watermark at a particular size that's the important thing now I won't bother actually running it, but that's basically the procedures I would suggest do it on one make sure it works then go back to this step and select the folder and where you want to save him too now for some people they look at this and kind of go ok and then other people do cart wheels because they know how hard this used to be to try and do it yourself is that you tried to creating action many years ago I spent ages I end up with, I think four different actions to this one thing because depending on how big the file was and whether it was taller wide this case, it doesn't matter because it says if I'm a wide document, I'll put it in the center I'm a tall put it in the center wherever you put so it doesn't automatically it's all relative so again, the only sort of cash this is you have to download and install it, it is free and at the moment in the current a couple of versions last couple versus polish up it should work fine and that may change or may not leave they'll have to wait and see on that regard, but that's a nice little little bonus ad on thing that we can do as well um okay, so I kind of alluded to this before this one straight since they have all these files for this for a second, one of the reasons I like using the combination of bridge and raw is if I take a whole series of photos and I realize across the board I need to change whatever it is white balance exposure something because I just picked the wrong setting this case I was at a workshop here's going actually deliberately shot these in the wrong like balance so I could demonstrate how to change it and then I realized people were looking over my shoulder going gosh his white balance looks horrible like that's for a workshop to make sure but it really was so I would again do the same kind of idea showed you with that first shot of italy is going and say ok let's say I want to change the white balance may I think I'll use the white balance tool in this case and maybe while I'm at it just just exposure a bit and again I want to open it I just want to tell it that's what I want these photos to look like and hit done now I come back here and select the rest of them and they could see there's a lot more of them and I choose develop settings previous conversion that goes through and fixes them all because they're raw files that means this is now the current setting in camera rob but if I double click on any one of them I could still adjusted so all studious kind of saying for now let's update to this without even opening them, I could just see, and if I had three hundred of these thumbnails, locals say, select all previous conversion the other way to do it would be, and I have a lot of people are asking about this kind of thing where they say, you know, every second weekend I go to the local high school to shoot the basketball game and it's in this, you know, old gym where there's not great lighting, and so with the gear that I have in order to capture the action, the photos or little dark because I don't have one of those crazy high I so cameras or whatever, so put the shutter speed up their little underexposed, I wantto bump them off, and it happens all the time because they know the situations always the same. My suggestion in that case was open one of them, change the settings and then create a preset to fix that particular problem. And then each every two weeks you open all the files, and instead of just choosing previous conversion, you pick the preset that you've previously created. So then you're addressing a specific issue so that the same thing applies initially, every single photo in this folder that I selected will be updated with that camera preset. But each individual goal that one looks a little too bright now I can go back to that released the lion's share of the work is done for me so I still may have to further tweaking, but at least I know the majority the work is done for me this white room have the ability to do a similar it's similar in light room it's a little different I'm trying to think of the name because I don't use like him enough to remember, but it has a similar principle where you can do is the same kind of thing and you definitely can make presets and light room and apply them so you could do the same kind of effect light room you could even do as you're importing like those you know, basketball shots you could even say on import apply this precept so as they're coming in they already have that preset apply to address that particular issue. What I like about this, though, is that the nature of raw files is nothing I do is permanent, so for now they've all been updated with this setting, but if any individual one I want to tweak, I still can and that's kind of a nice ability for me to be able to do that, okay, so we talked a little bit about things like healing and all that kind of stuff, but I always love to show this example because as much as I like to poke fun occasion at adobe inn some of things they do occasionally I got to say they just blow me out of the water this is the first time I ever saw content aware phil when they first introduced it I was just like I have this you know, I hate to say it, but I come a little jaded where I see them someone do a demonstration I'm thinking yeah that I'm sure that works well on that photo because you know, so when I saw content where phil the first couple examples were let's take, you know, kid out of a beach I'm like yeah, but that's all like sand it's all kind of organic like what about this? So this was the first well I've actually showing in now the after photo when I did content where phil this was the before with the big lamp post in front of it. Now imagine someone coming up to you and saying, can you just take the lamp post out? It sounds pretty simple, right? Just take it out well that's such a typical request but people know for shoppers go because you don't just take something out you make it look like it was never there and that's a lot different in the old days this would have been a lot of cloning and a lot of undue let me try that again because there wasn't any one feature where you just say do it in one shot so now there is this still blows me away that this works the way it does so all I've done here to save time is I made a selection I say this you wouldn't have to watch me trace around the lamppost but that's there's no trick there I just did that to save time as you can see it's not even that accurate it's kind of close but I didn't try to trace it exactly it is kind of went roughly around it and then it's the basic content aware function is under under phil just choose content aware keep everything else as is click ok now this is a fair I came to talk fast enough to say this is a fairly large file so it might take a minute it's already done and I mean look at it he didn't know there was a lamp post there a minute ago and that's like brickwork and stuff I mean it's pretty I know and are to get to that result using other methods like cloning would take me a whole heck longer than that four point three seconds so any time you're trying to do something now and I mentioned this kind of in passing earlier if you see any tool that has the word content of wearing it try it because it's such a great technology that it like the patch tool was good now it's excellent because of content aware trying to clone over things is good but using content where phil or content where patches usually better because it just does a better job of matching it in and who knows what the future holds with content aware I'm gonna get shot by billy if I don't stop applying things like this but there's only a few a next week to go because june eighteenth they've already announced this when they're going to do a big creative cloud what's new thing and who knows what might be there about things like content aware and making it even better maybe possibly so that's just you know, some people wouldn't say what they thought this was a section on automation well, it is because how would you have done that before? We're taking a whole lot longer than that. So even though it's not technically considered automation tool to me it is because how else would I have done that? It would have taken a whole lot longer so that's my interpretation of automation is compared to the alternative doing things a whole lot faster ok, so let's don't want to spend too much time in their other automated features and some of them are kind of cool and others air okay, I want to go through every single one but let's talk a little about this whole thing about actions as I mentioned earlier, the actions were around for a long time and some people embrace them and get them and use them all the time other people try them once and just I don't get it or it doesn't work or something else and I think actions were great I use them a lot for different purposes and sometimes I'll make an action for the next ten minutes because it's still faster than me doing I mean use it again so I think that's the other misconceptions people think I'm going to make an action have to make one that I'll use forever and ever and that would be great but it's not necessary so a number of years ago I started realizing come white I wonder why more people aren't using action. So as I traveled around went places did seminars and workshops I'd say how people here use actions and was almost always five to ten percent it was more than that I'd be surprised like in a big room people might be two or three percent and I'd say how people have no idea what an action even is and there might be five percent so it meant a lot of people said they knew what actions were but still didn't use them which made me think maybe they were interpreting what how to use it a little bit incorrectly so in talking all those people I found there were three main reasons people didn't use actions and the first was they said, I don't really know what it is fair enough you're not going to do something you don't want to miss. The second reason people didn't use actions is because they said, well, I thought actions were for like, if you had hundreds of images trying to like batch stuffed all of them, I'm like, well, that's part of it, but that's not the only reason, and that was the reason they weren't using it because they were doing it, but another very common reason that I found his people would say things like well, I tried actions once, but I had a very bad action experience where things went horribly wrong and was likely will never do that again. I was bad and unfortunately that's one of the realities of actions is sometimes you couldn't try something and it just falls to pieces here like I stop that's bad. So my suggestion is in order to get used to actions, start with something simple, really simple and then build from there and then the simpler you can and I I blame myself in parks I realized when isis so actions because I was so keen on them, I'd say look at this I can turn type into a melting lead peace with them, you know, and I do this ridiculous thing that was had forty eight steps and mostly will be lost and I realized that's not terribly practical because who does that that often? So sad I started thinking, well, what are the things that I do all the time and occurred to me if I'm working and photo shop and I think myself that's the fourth time in the last hour I've done that I'm going because you're doing it I'd make it in action because in action just means recorded and play it back at superhuman speeds fashion I ever could whether it's one step or twenty eight steps, it makes life simpler so couple of notes with that in mind everything about actions revolves around the actions panel. The first thing is going to make your life simpler is to make eight on the wide dobie just can't call these things folders and they call it a set because you know it looks like a fold river why not call it a set? So first thing is make a set there's a couple reasons for doing that one is simply organizationally, but the other is one of the big pluses of inaction is you can share it with other people, so if ukraine action is really helpful for you, you might attach it to email to someone else say hey, check this out there platform independent so doesn't matter mac pc doesn't matter on action is really just a set of instructions that says do this now to this down to this, but in order to be able to save an action to give to someone it oddly enough it has to be in a set so you cannot export one individual action unless that one action is in a set go figure, I don't know why that's just the way this okay, so I'm gonna create a set. Then when I start to think about creating an action, one of the things that I think really catches people with actions and what causes the trouble is actions are incredibly specific, so if you record a step that says open a file from now on, it'll always open that file. If you click on a layer that's called layer one and every other photograph, it looked for a layer called layer one I mean doesn't just say click on the next layer, it says click on the layer called open a file called so one of the first things I discovered the hard way was if I wanted an action that would work on a bunch of images, I had to make sure I already had a image open, because if I started recording and that's an open file every time it would open that file because that's how specific it is so if you're trying to record a generic action can use on any image start with an image open don't record that is one of the steps it'll messy up and that was when the first things I kept going why is this happening? And I realized because I told it to I started recording and then said, ok, open a file but I was actually saying opened this file called this from that folder, and every time I run it would either open that or if I deleted the file says can't work and what is going on so that's important tip number one is make sure you have a document open any document, however, if as part of your action you expect to save, then make sure this is a kind of a test dummy document don't mind if you save it over the top of itself because if you record that step, it will actually save it because you can only record operations you actually do you can't do a fake save or anything like that. Okay? So then within our set we say I want to make a new action and I'm going to show you just one example that only has a few steps, but there are steps that take a bit of effort and this way it's going to make life a little simpler so I'm going to use that there's a method of sharpening called leiby sharpened lobby is a mode we can use in photo shop that's not commonly used, but one of the methods weaken it's useful for is sharpening and then if I want to, I can give it a function key shortcut. But I'm not going in this case, but I could I could also do that later, and I hit the record button when I do that. From this moment on, any operation I do will be recorded as part of my action this used to make me panic because I'd be like, oh my gosh and I don't know, maybe this is just me, I don't think it is, but it's kind of embarrassing to admit this, but the first couple of times I was recording actions I don't know why I kept thinking it was recording how long I was taking so it's trying to things really quickly and I realized that's got nothing to do with it, just like what functions you do not how long you takes, you can relax and go ok, let me think about this and just and if you make a mistake and added extra step, you can edit it later and take it out. So if you can really panic and go oh no I did the wrong thing I've had actions where I recorded something out of the wrong step and I had undue so now my action went blah blah blah wrong undo so after I finished recording I just took out those two steps so it's very easy to edit that all right? So for this particular method we're gonna change the mode to l a be color and in the actions pal now it says convert mode if you really want to see it it would tell you to l a be color on by the way here's the thing about actions some of the wording it uses is sometimes little odd because you might use a tool like the lasso tool to make a selection and instead of saying last week hold says set selection to blah blah blah so sometimes the wording they used doesn't necessarily make sense to you at first but it will still work now the reason for doing this by the way and this is not a smart filled in and this is just a quick way to say I'm gonna apply this very quickly is normally a document is made up of rgb red green blue channels but when you sharpen sometimes you get see little fringes of color and one way to avoid that is by going to l a be mode now I have this channel called likeness and that's like kind of like the grayscale information if I sharpen that, then there's less chance of these halos and color things happening. So that's why this is method number one hundred seventy three for sharpening is just another option. So I clicked on the lightness channel. Then I go to my filter menu and I decide to sharpen now here's, where the first potential challenge comes along because they said before actions are very specific, so whatever I type in here, that will be my settings for this filter, so I have two choices. Basically, the first one is try to think of settings that I think I might want to use all the time, which frankly would be fairly challenging or don't worry about it, so I love anything or that one of the options is don't worry about it because as you'll see yes, this action at first will record those specific settings, but I will have the option later on of changing them so that's the method I use is they just get the filter in there all worry about the settings later on. So this is in a very to sway a way of making this smart it's not really a smart filter, but it effectively is kind of like that, so I hit ok and then we change the mod back to rgb and then we can stop recording so now I have a little action that's going to automatically take the open file, convert the moakley analyze channel on sharp mask and then put it back again I realized after doing that I use such subtle numbers for the un sharp mask you won't even be able to see it so let me over sharpen it I wouldn't normally do this but I want you to be able to see that something act it happened so now if I were to revert this and by the way I'm just doing it in this document to show you but the whole point of actions is they're not document specific they're built into photo shop so any document open from now on I can run this action to it course we'll see later I could run into a whole folder full of images I want paul to look the same okay so remember what I had to go through it to change the mode click on the channel do the filter here I just hit play and in like two seconds it's done so that's the whole point of inaction is no matter how good you are at keyboard shortcut stuff you'd never be able to work that fast so it was only two or three staffs what it was several trips to different men used to do it the action is goes bang and it's done if you have older machine it might be like bank just because you know the delay but that's still pretty cool but what do you do about that whole filter thing where you have recorded that filter? In fact I just put even hires you could see something happening what do you do where on some other photo you don't want that filter to be that intense? Well if you look closely here in the actions panel you'll see b in this case beside every step there's a little box here now some actions you'll only see one or two it depends on what the steps are but these are little interrupts which is that say well instead of just automatically running this action and applying whatever on sharp mass could I entered I'd prefer to pick it myself so when you click on it it's going to interrupt the action and let me put the settings and myself so the difference is the first case it was completely automatic this one it requires my interaction so I would do this for individual photos I would want to do a whole folder full of two hundred cause each one I'd have to sit there interact with it so that's the only part of this you have to kind of think about this is fine for this particular photo so now I hit play it does the first few steps and then it stops and says how much would you like to un sharp matt and I choose this much and I click ok and then it does the rest, so the difference is the first one just did it automatically using whatever settings I recorded this way I'm interrupting it long enough to say let me put the settings in and this applies to anything if you have a step in your action says and no curves adjustment layer you could put in interrupt to say let me pick the settings for that whatever way you want like a lot of things and photoshopped this interrupts, which will stay on until you turn off again and it's great when you have one image, but the problem is and said if you have a folder full of two hundred images, you want to sharpen them all if they're not, you don't want to interrupt each one and put in the same numbers. So the other option and the day I discovered this boy was happy about this and I talked a lot people whose actions all the time and they're like what? Because a lot of people would re record this step to try and change the settings, but one of the little things that I don't even know how long it has been in action spot being quite a long time thes air the last settings I use showing right here if I just double click on it, it lets me put in different settings and now those of the settings from now on, so if I knew I was going to do a batch action to a folder full of one hundred images, I would first think, ok, what how don't want to sharpen this do this first turn off that motile control to make sure it's fully automatic, but now I've adjusted the settings relative to the work I'm about to do and that's a really nice way of making a fairly generic action for different purposes, but then making it more specific on a case by case basis by going in and re recording ineffective by double clicking, and this applies to any where we see that little box empty box beside it that typically means you can double click and go use thes settings instead. Before this, I used to end up with, like, five different versions of every action where I duplicate in action ahead of the steps, which also works. But then you get all these actions to figure out which one is so this is now the way I look at it is this is a very rough equivalent of saying I want this filter to be editable, but I'd do it ahead of time. Once it's applied in this scenario, I couldn't I could have made an action that said. Turn that layer of the smart object, apply a smart filter blah, blah, blah. And then the end result of the action would have been a layers panel full of stuff. But that that's just another approach to take. So actions aren't smart unless you make the results of its smart. So whatever you record involves smart, smart, filter, et cetera. Maybe you're going to cover this. But can you make an action call? Other actions, in other words, can you I like that. I love the way you think. Can I really do? Yes, you can. And that's, one of my favorite parts is if you've already done a sharpening part. Why recorded again? Why not just say, do these other things and now play that action. So all you do is when you record the action, one of the steps is play this action so I would record set one, two, four, five and then click on this and say, now play on shark maso in the action, it would say, step whatever step blah, blah, blah, play this action. So yes, and exactly because why? I mean, if you could do that sort of redoing all your work, you know, makes perfect sense.