by David Peters
If you weren’t already aware, Photoshop has these great features called Actions. Actions can be used for many things, including doing the mundane tasks you don’t feel like doing, creating amazing effects, and maximizing productivity.
I only just discovered the wonder of Batch Processing. I’m dedicated and detail oriented, but sitting in front of the computer adjusting the Hue/Saturation for the countless number of photos taken at my son’s first birthday was simply out of the question. I did find a more than happy solution in Batch Processing.
When you create an action you need it to do one thing, whatever that “thing” may be. In my case, I needed to change the Hue/Saturation for 80+ images from aqua to my “trademark” teal. You may need to create an action for a different purpose; however for now lets all agree we are going to change the Hue/Saturation. Now, to follow along you’ll need something to work on. Grab a small image, like an icon.
Now go to Window > Actions and make sure it that it is checked. If it is, you should see a tab in the Layers Palette labeled Actions.
Click on the arrow button to expand the Actions menu and choose “new set.” This creates a folder for the action you create (you don’t necessarily need the folder, it simply helps with organization.)
Go back to the Actions menu and select “New Action.” I’ll give you three guesses as to what this does. Now, before recording an action you need to figure out the steps you’ll need to take and the order in which you’ll need to take them. Since this is a pretty simple action you can do this is your sleep eventually.
Next comes recording. Begin by clicking on the little circle icon in between the square and the triangle at the bottom of the palette. Once that is selected everything you do in Photoshop will be recorded until the end of action. If you do the wrong step no worries, simply stop the action by clicking the square icon and return to your last step.
For our action, the first thing we need to do is change the Mode of the image to RGB, since .gif files are saved in Index mode which don’t take too kindly to colorization. So with the action recording, go to Image > Mode > RGB.
Next, we’ll have to strip the image of it’s current color to make adding our (my) own color easier to apply, so go to Image > Adjustment > Desaturate.
There will be a naked grey image left to which we need to add some color. While still recording your action, go to Image > Adjustments > Hue/Saturation. I keep the rose color settings saved in a .ahu (Hue/Saturation) file already so all I have to do is press Load and select Rose.ahu, but you can achieve this color by using the sliders.
Finally, we save it for the web. Check that your action is still recording and go to File > Save For the Web and set your file type and optimization settings. I use the customary GIF settings. Choose the destination directory and save.
Stop recording and say “Yay, I made an action!” because you’re finished. Now to put your newly born action into… ahem… action, we’ll do a Batch Process. What this will do is take all the images in a specified directory and apply whatever changes were recorded in the action. Just for the sake of the tutorial, create a directory and drop some images into it, or just duplicate one that you already have.
To begin the process go to File > Automate > Batch and make sure the name of the Action Set you just recorded is in the first dropdown list and the name of the Action is in the second. Set the third dropdown box (next to Source) to Folder and use the Choose button to find your duplicated or created folder of images. For destination, you can either leave it set to it’s default “None” to have the action applied and saved in the source folder, or save the “actionized” images into a separate folder. Once you have everything configured to your liking, click OK.
Now sit back and watch your images color themselves because you’re using Actions and Batch Processing to do your dirty work
