Actions, anyone use them?

racer

I have a ton of actions that I like, but I always have issues trying to find the correct one. Here is how it works, I think to myself, I will use _____ action on this photo, then I go and look at the action list to try to find that action I am looking for, then I cant find it. I will end up finding one that I think might be it, click play, nope thats not it, undo it all, go to the next one, nope that not it ether, grrrrr :bluduh....
Most of the time it dosnt even seem worth the hassle

Any tips, tricks?

Thunder Rabbit

Howdy.

I use actions constantly. I have a ton of them. Actions can be organized into folders if you want. They can be color coded, but this will only be visible when you are in "Button" mode, which I am about 99% of the time. One click on the button and the action runs. And make sure you name your actions as specifically as possible in the space allowed.

Hope this helps.

colourbox

Maybe you could print yourself a contact sheet from Bridge and scribble next to each picture the action that you used so that you have a visual reference.

racer

colourbox wrote: »

Maybe you could print yourself a contact sheet from Bridge and scribble next to each picture the action that you used so that you have a visual reference.

That is awesome, thats exactly the type of solution I was looking for

Thunder Rabbit wrote:

"Button" mode, which I am about 99% of the time.

I never noticed the button mode before, that is helpful, thanks

WinsomeWorks

actions save time

racer wrote: »

I have a ton of actions that I like, but I always have issues trying to find the correct one. Here is how it works, I think to myself, I will use _____ action on this photo, then I go and look at the action list to try to find that action I am looking for, then I cant find it. I will end up finding one that I think might be it, click play, nope thats not it, undo it all, go to the next one, nope that not it ether, grrrrr :bluduh....
Most of the time it dosnt even seem worth the hassle

Any tips, tricks?

I hadn't learned to use actions for the 3 yrs. I'd been using PS. Then, last spring, I finally learned how to use them, created a bunch, labeled them very carefully & accurately as someone else mentioned, and started going to town with batch-editing whole folders of photos. It was absolutely awesome & a fantastic time-saver for me. I was really disgusted that I'd been doing it the slow way all along, especially for the stuff I'm doing constantly-- boosting light, boosting or dropping contrast, etc. I sounds to me like if you spend more time naming the folders well, that'll help a lot. I had folder names like "Lightening", "Darkening", "Saturation", "Warming", "Cooling", "Concert adjustment", etc. Under something like "lightening", I had "+2stopsExp." etc. I kept all my folders in basically alphabetical order. If I had a series of actions that were usually used for a certain type of photo (such as concerts, where I'm often boosting light, cooling, etc. etc.) I called it something like "Concert light & cool" so it was easy to guess at a glance what all those actions were going to do for me.

The reason I'm speaking in past tense here is that about a month after I created all my actions, they got lost... seemingly permanently. It was the only thing that got truly lost when our computer crashed.... we just could never find the actions files anywhere on the new or old Hard Drive, and the old PS couldn't be opened anymore. A lot of folks here tried to help, but alas. That was PS 2. I now have PS 4 & haven't cracked it open yet... have been so depressed about losing all those actions that I took weeks to set up. So I have to start from scratch with them. Which reminds me, I came here to ask a question about that! So.. sorry to go off on a tangent... definitely use your actions... it's so worth the hassle! Otherwise, like me, you'll end up w/ a bunch of un-corrected folders of photos for years.

The one part I didn't quite have figured out to my liking was how to create the action so that files would be named/renamed the way I wanted when they'd been processed, and also how to change them into PSDs, jpgs, whatever, the way I wanted. I don't work on & re-save jpgs, ever, because of wanting to avoid any compression artifact compounding. So I wanted all my actions to change them into PSDs, then save as PSD + jpg. It seems to me I had some trouble getting it to do exactly what I wanted, and there's also a mistake in my PS for Dummies book about this, which screwed me up for awhile. That's what I'm dreading.... figuring this all out again....aaaargh! Good luck!

racer

well, for general adjustments I use camera raw 99% of the time. I do a batch of shots and manually adjust them, or I use presets that I have set.
What I use actions for, is if I have a image, or a few images that I want to add more complicated effect to. I dont use the same actions to often, because only certain images are right for them. I download a lot of other peoples actions to get looks that I would have never thought of. I have over five hundred actions, and the problem isnt with organization, but with finding the correct look that I am thinking of. For instance, I might think the image might look good with a certain old color film look I have used before, so then I am looking threw 50 "old color film" actions to find the correct one I was thinking of.

Anyway, it seems I have been totally missing the obvious solution though. What I decided to do, is to name the finished photos according to the folder+action#, so if it was a "old color film", I list that then the number of the action. This way, when I want to give another photo a old color film look, I can go to my processed photos folder, do a search for "old color film", and look at the ones I have used.