Lessons

Lesson Info

Batching & Audience Q&A

If you had a whole series of photographs that you wanted to apply this to I could select them all or individually once I wanted to if I wanted and then you'll see in photo shopped there is a function called batch frank batch having are said to save a couple times so now this is how smart this is the fact that I just did that action it kind of assumes that's the one I want but if it's not I can change it and say it's actually within this set and I want to use this action now the batch part the concept of it is take every image in this folder and apply that same action with those same settings so this would be assuming thes air all similar enough that I wanted them all toe be sharp in the same way or whatever the action is ok a couple of notes before I show this any further batch actions can be really great but they're also the part that make people hit their head against the wall because sometimes you might miss one little thing and then it it just goes to pieces really really quickly s...

o my suggestion is if you're creating something you intend to be a batch action tried on like two images first before you run it on one hundred fifty or two thousand because you could get caught in something that you'll it's taken forever trying to stop it so I would think say ok, I think that's gonna work let me try it on two or three and then if that works then I'm feel better about applying it to many, many, many depending on the situation you'll see it's saying what's the source in my case I clicked on files and bridge you could also point to a particular folder whatever you want and then and here I'm going to make sure I suppress some of these warnings is that the part of the idea of a batch is have it do the whole thing automatically I'd love to walk away, have lunch come back and have it done the worst thing could happen has happened me one times I forgot to do this I went ok run that batch and I walked away and I came back an hour later and I was stuck on the first image because there was a warning message about some color thing I was like and I said at the time gosh, that is rather unfortunate I'm sure is exactly what I said at that moment in time so that that's something to be aware of. Also one of things that throws people off is if they have an action that includes a save command like you want to do three or four steps and then finally save with a j peg it will record save us a j peg called this file name so what happens many people is they run a batch action expected to have four hundred images they have won because it keeps overriding the same file name. So that's what? This little thing that says override action save as commands is a fancy way of saying, just remember the fact it's j peg, not the file name, so usually that's the solution for I want them all to be j peg, but clearly I don't want them all to be the same file name. Now the final thing I'll say about batch ing is I'm not sure why this happens. I thought it happened. I know many other people had it happen. I've talked to engineers that adobe saying why this has happened? You could have everything in this dialog box set up perfectly and it won't work and then you try it again the second time with exactly the same settings and it works fine. So the reason I say that as I met a lot of people who go, I don't know what happened, I followed all the instructions are trying to run a batch, it didn't work and my suggestion is is going to sound silly but tried again. Because I don't know what it is sometimes there's one of those glitchy things that happens where it's not your settings it's just I don't know what it is it's thursday I mean, who knows there's just so don't be discouraged if you go what the heck why didn't that work or more importantly I know I've run this before with the same settings how come we didn't work this time? Well if that can happen so don't be discouraged if you try a batch and go get some air messengers nothing happens or the results aren't we expect usually it's just some you know weird put cheese personally I like to because I'm nervous about making a mistake I like to say take the files from this folder apply the action and say them in this different folder if you pick a destination none that means overwrite like put it right back where it was and the potential is you could override a file really mess yourself up so I if I was just search on my folder my hard drive I bet I find about twenty five folders called after because I keep making folders called after inside a different bolder than I know that's where the results of the batch go I'm not going to actually run it because who cares but that's the ideas you pick it make sure you don't have any one of those motile control things turned on oh here's the other thing and this is I love this one if you have commanded says savers j peg then in theory if you choose that override action save as commands you know how when you go to save a jpeg get that second dialog box that says quality you know on a scale of one to twelve in theory if you have that turn on is you should assume whatever quality setting you have but I've had times of people told me the same thing where they go to run a bash every time it says it's waiting for you to click ok so that's a pain because you have to sit there and like though okay okay okay okay you're going to think I'm kidding about this I'm actually not take a glass of water and put it over your enter key and walk away because it'll be really noisy because your machine ago beat beat, beat, beat, beat, beat but it just means it's like you're going like this with the ok button and they'll fix the problem I'm not kidding because I did that once I'm like I'm not here for foreign image and go like this I also thought game one of the little birds like those things used to have that would like to go into the water and see if I could the chances of that timing would be really bad so everyone but water on the good idea I mean anything heavy that I could be a safer but and like I said, I'm talking about the walk away part because your machine will start beeping at you going don't do that but just like la la la la and then it does the rest for you now again that in theory shouldn't happen but the reason I mention it happens enough to people that don't be surprised if you're like why is it keep asking me that could happen to cure that have you tried uh doing a save as well? The problem is you're recording the file name at that point then and so then the action would write well I mean and that's the theory is if you do is save as that this override should override the file name but it should also override that second dialog box of when you save his j peg that's the one that's the problem is that what quality of j peg and I've had times where it works like a charm, others were maddeningly keeps morning me to click ok and that's why I mentioned because there probably is some solution someone's discovered out there I found that it's part of who knows what's going to happen or not happily sometimes you go out there we don't work find the frustrating thing is that you do the same thing a week later it's like now why is it asking me and no one seems to know why it happens but it does so that's kind of the one of the reasons we're saying inaction is that here's something I wanted you to a bunch of images so let's speed things up and again I would say even there even a batch action could be due three quarters of this for me and now we'll do the rest myself but least that three quarters times x number of photos is still help so again revision that same concept don't onley think of actions as I need to that whole thing because even getting closer can help so that's kind of the theory of actions now having said that there was a case I kind of referred to this earlier I think a little bit let me just set something up here to make a new document this used to bug the heck enemy and thankfully there is a solution to it now because of this default but in the early days of photos office I mentioned before if you created something and you decided to add a stroke layer stocks and pick a different colors that's not gonna show very well okay this week is what used to having this is what prompted me to think of this idea that I'll tell you more when I'm talking about a second so I go to stroke and I mention before always default to outside red so every single time I had to change it now thankfully there's this default but one day I remember thinking that is so annoying that I'm just over it I'm like I just kind of most solutions you know what? I'm going to create an action and all that action does is at a black stroke inside that's all nothing else and I did it now some I went light bulb I thought, you know, there's probably a lot of those little things they're just little stand alone things that still take me like eight clicks why? Why? Why would I make an action to do that? So one day I did that I just went and created a whole bunch of individual actions that just do one thing here's an example rotate ten degrees clockwise nor to do that you have to go free transform go click up in the options bar and put minus ten enter enter now I just have one step where I click in and doesn't so I went through and took me a little while but not that long to say ok rotate clockwise counterclockwise flip horizontal vertical scale smaller duplicate layer make smart object because right now, after white, click and choose that add layer mask hidden or reveal a kn sharp mask at y struck adlai stroke et cetera. Now all of these are built in here so they're accessible now at this point I still have to either put a function key shortcut on them or click on it and hit the play button the other option which is very interesting especially when you create a series of these what I would call one step actions we don't really do one thing is in the actions panel there's a display mold called button mode and this turns your actions into little buttons so now I can go let's rotate this and make it smaller and make it a smart object and add a black stroke on this going one action one acting on it but I'm doing them as little clickable buttons and I just did like a bunch of operational made me go this menu this many of this menu this menu, this menu, this panel you know? I mean it would just be like all these steps to do something really quickly so you can create whatever you want in there and all I did was I set in this set called one step I just went start recording rotate stop recording so that takes time initially to go through and record serve his little one step operations but honestly I did these two and a half years ago so now they're just there if I want to do something and I happen to use button mode because it's quicker than I don't want remember all the f key short cuts but either way you could if you want to edit them you have to get out of but most going adm or change them you'll notice some are color coded that's another option that's in actions I don't personally use but those are ones that came with get to the color coded how do you how do you color code? Oh that's went in the action itself when you are creating it one of the options is color down here so some people exam want everything it's red is a retouching action and that's a personal thing or just they just like rainbows and unicorns so I went through I had a lot of actions and some, like I made myself in some I got from the internet you bought whatever and I organize them and then, um I turned off the auto shop and then they were back to how they were something like this and then another time um I put them on turnout footer shop and then went back and they weren't there. So my friend said, oh, go into that folder click on it and there a couple of things so I am trying to organize because there's some actions that he used all the time and that I want to like bring to the top is there like unfortunately this is this is the sad part of actions as much as other things in photo shop like you can create work spaces for panel positions actions has a well deserved reputation off, so you some other term not doing very well at that? So I've had cases where I record three actions and I well, I don't ever quit photo shop so full of soft quits on me and I come back and they're not there, and that shouldn't happen because action should stay there unless you delete them action should stay in the order you put them until you change them again and I have no clue why that happens. Unfortunately, it happens more with actions than anything else. So when we talked the other day about presets and the preset manager, that doesn't include action, so if actions you want to make sure that a certain point you're clicking on this set and choosing save actions and putting them somewhere now if you put them in the actions folder in presets and I use my favorite phrase theoretically they should stay where they are and et cetera, but at the very least, if they're gone, you know where to find them, you can load them right back in again, but as I mentioned earlier, this only works with actions have to be in sets, so for example, this one action I created down here if I tried to click on the individual action saved action is not available. I have as odd as it sounds have to click on the set and then there's only one action I still have to do that in order to save just that one action. So this is how if you created some really cool action you wanted to share with your friends, he would have to put it in this set so you could export it or save it. It becomes a dot htm file that's this big on your email it to someone say, here we go and they double click on it at loads okay, if you happens if you do the same thing with a set with many actions than many actions or export but it's, just one of the sort of I think quirky things is the only one is one action I still have to put in the set, but I wish I could answer a question better to say why it happens. I don't know why it happens very frustrating because most other things do a pretty good job of remembering the order of brushes or the order of something, but with actions. I really don't know why that's the case it's very odd that that that happens I really don't know why it is frustrating, so I'm afraid the one thing I would say is at least make sure that if actions disappear completely that you have a backup off them so you can load them back in because that would be the worst the order thing that's really unfortunate and I wish that was better, but and I wish I could tell you how to fix it, but it's not so like every other priest set these ones. This doesn't have to the preset manager again when you say there's a set of great I want to save it, I would be putting it in this folder, which is in presets within photoshopped and then save it in there. So at least now in a pinch, if I say, where did it go? I could go to this pop up menu and it would appear down here, not have to restart photo shopped for it to be there, but it would appear at least I would know I could load them back in again. Now what some people do and this might be a solution is instead of having an actions panel that's giant that has all these actions, you just have a whole bunch of sets you previously saved and loadem as you need him. So other words don't bother even loading the ones you hardly ever use load the one you would use all the time if you need the other ones, you could sort of temporarily load the men, so that might be one possible solution still wouldn't help with the fact that they're in a different order but at least this way and you down here any time fi pick ah folder it's going to say do you want it's already there it's not gonna happen but it's like do you want? And they're just added again to the bottom because I did that so that's one of the ways where you can say kind of narrow down you know, make the actions panel initially less busy and then kind of load him. So um the things I like about actions is once you kind of get the hang of them and can you mentioned this? This is exactly do with this one step action now I have all these one step actions I could record in action said first run this action then run this action in this been run this action because they're already there so said I mean re recording them but even simple things like I could add a keyboard shortcut but I added the keyboard shortcut earlier for outer layer mask, but it only works as when as alarm ask it ignores what do you have a selection or not? Because that's a different keyboard shortcut so I could crave action that's based on if I have a selection either haider show it if you're looking at actions and one of the ways that's a good idea too kind of get a handle on how actions work if you're not entirely sure the default actions are, I would say could some are incredibly practical, but they're at least good to get you started. But if you ever look at a series of actions and there's only a couple here but I'll just mentioned this is important see how like this one says vignette and then in brackets selections this one says type this one says selections one says layer one of the kind of always say accepted ways of using actor naming actions is any time you see something in parenthesis like that, it is a way of saying first make a so that action won't work unless you've already made a selection another one will only work if there's a type player, so if I didn't have a type player, I tried to run the action called cash shadow it would give me an error message, so any time you get someone else's action and you see something in brackets that's the way of saying either make sure you have a or makes you have clicked on a whatever it isthe layer selection type, so if you're recording your own action of a similar way that's on a bad I did name it that way yourself to remind yourself, oh yeah this only works if I first make a selection, then run the action one of the great things about actions is there are tons of people out there that make actions and share them with the rest of the world. The bad part is some of them don't think about stuff like that and don't bother to tell you. Oh, by the way, this only works if you're in san, why k mode and you click on suction, suction the neuron and what is going on here? And that sometimes the error message in action actually very often the error message inaction is does no help whatsoever. It says the option set visible is no longer a reliable in the gizmo. I know what it says. I mean, they're just like, ok, thanks that's really helpful or just says not available so you know not not sure why it's happening the way I learned the most about actions I found a couple of websites that here's some actions for you. And they had really cool names like text lollypop, conversion or something, actually. And I wantto action say, it's, one of my biggest pet peeves is there's a lot of people that sell action collections, but they call their actions like lollypop enhance. Okay, thanks. Once that do you know where they just name it, something like dangerous. Because they're my this creates a look that's dangerous I'm like yeah, but what does it actually do end up having to run it to see and my biggest beef is actions that there's nothing to stop people from making an action where the result is editable nondestructive you could make an action instead of saying run levels run the levels adjustment layer with my suggested settings but then at least you can see how it worked I don't want an action that says old fashioned pull right it was banging has done I have no idea what just happened that I don't like it I have to throw it away I'd rather say have that action apply but give me material that I can go ok I can tweet that a little bit but that's just me anyway I just completely lost my train of thought because I interrupted myself about that um but if if you see an action oh yes we're going to say when you're learning in action so by nature the whole point of inaction is run really fast, you know, save yourself time but sometimes it happens so fast kind of go what just happened there and if you're trying to learn what happened so you can make a similar action one of the ways you can do that is here's an action molten lead come on with a name like that you've got to try that so one of the options you can do is whereas a playback options normally you wanted to be accelerated, but if you're trying to understand what's happening, you could actually slow it down as a learning tool you go oh, it did this and then because sometimes with actions you have to kind of a work around because you might not be able to record it the way you want, so sometimes it takes three steps to do what you wanted to do, but it happened so fast you don't know that so was a learning tool I would use one of these ones either step by step or pause so you can kind of see what's happening however very important you remember to put it back the way it was because later on you'll run actually, why is it taking so long? Because you told it to now one of things that I'm really interested and I haven't played with I haven't had a kn forcing occasions yet to try this, but this is also a more recent photo shop I want to say see see, I don't want to say one hundred percent I'm pretty sure there's two things used to be you could not record tool operations like painting, so if you want to record in action that said paint this or clone that or he'll that it wouldn't work because that wasn't on option that was what they used to call a kn actionable, which is a way of saying it can't be recorded but in recent versions of foshan I want say this was forced up c s six and it's interesting because just one command but it changes everything there's now a choice called allow tool recording if that's turned on now when I'm recording actions aiken record paint with the healing brush clone with the cone stamp tool whatever I want now you be careful with that because that assumes if I'm healing that it's the same position on every photograph, but you know what that might actually be useful here is about the only practical example I can think of and hopefully you never have to do this and that's if you open a series of photographs and you see that you've got censored us on every single photograph the only good thing about center dozens in the same place in every single photograph, so it has the potential for me the automated because it's not moving if there was just an annoying element that was in different places, you couldn't record that because it moves, but at least here I can see their sensor dust in two or three places so I could make a new action call it something and all I'm going to do in my action is make a new layer, take the healing brush and thanks. Sure, the ansel good there's one there there's one up here somewhere at first I thought there was one on there but that's actually a piece of masking tape so that one does actually move, so those are the main ones and I just had stopped recording. So now I say although I have all these other ones too this one has the same problem now instead of having to do that all by hand I just hit the play button and it just goes that one son too now I chose to do it as a separate layer and leave it that way on lee in case her leg happens to be right where the sensor dust is it might look really weird if the healing tool does something to her legs I still want the option of going in, but still again much faster than the alternative of me going well next one he'll next one hell, especially when it's in the same place. So the tool recording part is pretty interesting. It's very you have to remember actions are always very, very specific, as I mentioned earlier, if you're recording an action and in your action your on the background and you click on layer one it records click on the layer called layer one, so in subsequent documents, if you have a layer called tree, it won't work because it doesn't record click on the next layer up it says where's that layer called layer one so what you have to do in a case like that? There's work arounds but yet there's a whole bunch of keyboard shortcuts don't bother going to them now just so you're aware that if you're trying to record select the next layer up, you have to get through the keyboard that says select the next layer up, not select the layer called this so many people run into these road blocks because they're just used to sort of clicking on things but remember that's one of the key things about actions is they're very very specific ok? Ok the other thing I wanted to mention and I'm not going to go into great detail here but I think this for some people especially camera can see camps going like this I can just tell already because that could see that his brain works the same way I like it so part of the problem with actions they are so specific is if you have a folder full of images it's like well summer landscape, summer portrait or some factor changes what if you want to say I only want the landscape ones to be effective, not the other ones that was always a well then record to actions then they and created something which is really nice called insert conditional which says if the document is landscape, then play the next step otherwise or in this case that first play this action instead, don't do anything so it's allowed you to insert some variable to say, if I'm looking this folder, if it's a tall image, don't do anything, if it's, why then do this? And then a whole series of things that it has a shape player do this if it hadn't been, does have everything, and you can't currently make your own, but this covers a lot of the main ones, typically these probably the biggest one, if its landscape do this action otherwise do nothing or some combination. So this is a way to take actions up a notch to say, and this is really interesting, because in the past, like you said, people would record, they'd actually call it tall action wide action because you had to there was no way to say either or so this is ahh really nice feature as your recording in action at us, a certain step you would insert this and say now, based on this criteria, you either play the next step or play this actions that or whatever it might be, you have to kind of think about it and go ok, I need to do a conditional so anyone actions going to rotate one that isn't so then when I get to this condition will play this action or not so it takes a bit of kind of thinking through but gosh it's a nice option as opposed to the alternative having to have let me do all my vertical images first now let me go back and do all my now landscape orientation second, this just means you khun do a fair bit not everything but a lot of the common things we want to do and can you nest conditional actions as well? Well, it's it's considered part of inaction so you could as your recording and say inserted this conditional now two steps later do another one so you can sort of get to that end I think, but it's still, this is the first implementation of this, so I've expected to continue to grow because this was something people were asking for for a long time, so this is a really good start um still continues to tweak I'm sure a little bit, but it still is a nice way to deal with some common problems that that's just one of the basically how you'd use it if you were in the middle of recording in action and suddenly thought, oh, wait then you just go to this menu and she was insert conditional so when I click ok now just becomes a step in that action so typically you're already recording a certain point or you write the beginning, but you're as you're recording, you insert that as a part of the process is a conditional it says depending on this circumstance hey, one last thing I want to show you if you're either recording an action for someone else or that someone is going to use or you just have a really, really bad memory and what will happen member that example I showed you where it kind of pause that on sharp mask imagine giving that to someone who had never seen action all of sudden on sharp mass popped up in their face and like what just happened there you might want to warn them that in the next step you'll have to enter your settings for on sharp mask and that's one of the kind of neat things about this is you can actually go in and do something called insert stop which again is well sort of saying insert you know, like message they called it a stop so you would say like in the next step you must put in your your settings for a kn sharp mask whatever it is and then click allow continue so now when the action runs yeah, yeah yeah and then there's my little swedish message that says interested or four d feeds it heard it and you say yes or no now, if you have, I shouldn't say this, but I love doing this to people I was working with an intern that was like, I really want to work with you, you know, helping the studio, but I've got to be honest, I'm not that familiar with photo shop I said, well, I'm gonna set you up with a couple actions so you'll have to click play and in the action his name was jim, I just made a stop in said hi, jim that's all. So is this writing uses like that for herself talking? I'm like, oh no, you have the personalized virus where photo shops are talking to you can also do that too, but that's one of things that just it's a nice way after the fact and say, you know what I should add some functionality is special. I wish more people did this when they shared actions publicly, because sometimes it would do the first step should say, make sure you have clicked on a type player like, ok, that's kind of good to know so you could do that after the fact and in any action, all these check marks mean include or not. So for your own purposes, you might decide not to include that stop because you know what it's for so anything that's in an action you could turn on turn off, change the order at it, delete all that kind of stuff now atlantis dinner was not to do a you know, full blown everything could possibly ever know about actions, but the biggest thing I want to reassure people is it it can be a simple as one step in fact, that's a very practical way of using actions just think about gosh is a ten or twelve things I do all the time that air three menus deeper and bawls me going into later styles and going on a button? Why not make that little individual actions? And you can just apply either individually or build on each other by saying now make an act in places other actions that also remind everyone that if you do decide to try batch ing, just be prepared it could take some effort don't be shocked if it does doesn't work the first time and tested on a few images before you just run on three hundred images. Otherwise you'll be tearing your hair up, so to speak as we close out if you pulled out a few of the last few days I thought were some pretty good ones and j k as well um sam cox wanted to know workflow question do you save your work frequently? Well in photoshopped should I say frequently even if I start photoshopped from within light room? Well, you know I think it's always a good idea to save on an ongoing basis before all this smartness happened with, you know, smart object, smart filters and adjustment layers and mass and all those things I would think twice about you so think twice about saving because you might save and then ten minutes ago now I can't go backwards because I saved for me because I'm totally building it in this editable way I might as well save it because I know every bit I can still go back so I would hate to lose work by not saving and so I would say yes save on a regular basis on even if it starts in light room it's when you close it it's going to go back in that room catholic still want to be saving on a regular basis to make sure you don't on those rare rare occasions where photoshopped might happen to crash because that hardly ever happens but just in case it does, I want to be prepared for that another question by saving of formats michelle b would like to know in the safe section khun dave explain how adobes different j peg saving formats how they work j pick jay pick two thousand j pic stereo adobe is one of those companies that that tries to accomodate all the industry standards out there I would say that ninety nine point nine percent of people use j peg but a number of years ago some company said hey this j pay two thousand might be even better for web design so they incorporated that so there's formats under that list that are there because they was there twelve years ago and I just left it there just in case so I would say unless there was a compelling reason where you were working with some lab and they said make sure you save it in this format then just use j peg and just put the settings as high as you can because the settings is what compresses the j pagan potential uses quality a little bit so I almost always unless there's some again compelling reason I'm up bird ten eleven twelve because even for web pages these days I don't want to put the quality to low problems like facebook compressed the heck out of it anyway so I want to start off with it as high as I can great row sonic would like to know is there a way to see the structure of all the nested smart objects so you can keep track of them? I wish there was you know really do that would be my next thing on my smart object wish list was a way of somehow I don't know, twirling down and saying, let me see the path or something that at the moment the answer is no. The good news is, there's, no question my mind that adobe is completely committed to smart things. So there's a very good chance that this will continue developing there maybe on option to do that kind of thing down the road. But at the moment, unfortunately not I wish there was. Okay, well, we have one last question, dave, this comes from a c m eighty three christmas france when picking a font. Do I need to worry about what setting the front needs to be at? So, like changing too sharp versus chris? What is the difference? The that's ah, anteater missing, which is a determines like the edge of the typeface as to what it looks like. Generally, I'd only worry about that if I was using very small font sizes for like websites or things like that that firm most other purposes, whatever the default is, I use it looks great. Um, something one of things we have to always remember both photo shop. Is that and someone actually that's just reminding me someone tweeting me this question. You know, is there still a reason to use safer web? Because at one point, that was the way everyone used to make a j peg for a website. Is that all these options and that's? Because we were concerned every little kilobyte of information so I could save two percent of file size, I would my ass phobia. I can think of the last time you say for webb, because just going save a jpeg mean works is fine. So the same thing with things like anti alias settings, they were originally put in there because in the early days of web browser, to really concern yourself with the look of tight, I can remember the last time I changed auntie, a listen to something different, because it worked fine. So unless you're working with someone or a application and says, make sure you do this, that I wouldn't worry about that.