Well, I don’t know about you but I shot several hundreds of photos during my pause and more of them, due to the strong light coming from the Sun at the Zenit, need to be post-produced. While I’m working on them I realized that some corrections should be the same for more than one picture and that I can save my time creating a Photoshop action.
If you want to record your own action here you find a quick tutorial about saving an actions in Photoshop.
But what exactly is an action? It is the recording of several Photoshop operation and command to automate repeating tasks. Photoshop Actions only apply to automated commands but excludes all actions performed through the tools menu. This means that you can adjust shadows, lights, apply filters, modify size, rotate etcetera but not record lines drawing, selections, erasures, and so on.
For example, if you have shot several photos under-exposed, or if the light temperature has turned the original color, by recording a corrective action you can apply the adjustment to all affected images at one time.
Photoshop itself includes a set of default actions that you can access once you have the palette open.
1. Open you image and be sure that you are going to work on a separate layer from the background so that you will be able to return to your original image.
2. Open the Actions palette.
If it's not visible on your screen, go to Window > Actions
3. Click on Create a New Set to create a folder that is going to contain your own action and name it appropriately. i.e. Blue enhancing
The Action set appears in the list.
4. Now click the Create New Action icon at the bottom of the palette. Name the Action i.e. Light Correction.
5. Push the Rec button.
Photoshop starts from now to record every single step, resizing, adjustment, effect etc. you are going to apply to the image. You can always delete useless steps once finished.
When you're done click the Stop button.
The Action is now stored in the palette in the Set that you have previously named.
You can now apply this action to many other pictures just clicking the play button.
