Back to Titanic: Making Waves: Copal's Queue: Actions

Today in Titanic History - with Searching

Today in
Titanic History
Thursday, January 30, 2025

1854 - 1st class passenger Mr Arthur Webster Newell was born to Benjamin Newell and Susan Bennett Newell in Chelsea, Massachusetts, USA.

1867 - 1st class survivor Mr Walter James Hawksford was born.

1894 - 1st class survivor Mrs Mary Graham Carmichael Marvin was born to Frank Farquharsen and his wife.

1920 - 1st class survivor Mrs Mary Wick died at the age of 53.

2001 - 2nd class survivor Master Michel Marcel Navratil died in Montpellier, France at the age of 92.

1990 - 3rd class survivor Miss Anna "Annie" Mcgowan died in Chicago, Illinois, USA at the age of 95.

1958 - 3rd class survivor Mrs Beila Moor died at the age of 75.

search other dates

Shop at Cafepress

more Titanic designs

Actions

I was recently introduced to "Actions" and my life hasn't been the same since. Something that has always hindered my ability to post pictures quickly is making thumbnails. Call me an idiot, but I've been making all of them in Photoshop step-by-step. Actions are the answer when you're sitting there doing something repetitive in Photoshop. I'll use making thumbnails as my example.

The thumbnails I make are a max of 80 pixels high and a max of 80 pixels wide. I Sharpen (with the Sharpen filter) them to make them clearer when they're reduced, and then I decrease the number of colors to 8-24 colors. Actions work like a VCR (you know, that archaic machine we used to watch movies in the stone age). In Photoshop, go to "View" and choose "Show Actions". That way the Actions tab will come to the front, no matter where you have it. In the bottom of that little dialog box are buttons just like you find on your VCR. Press the little piece of paper (between the buttons and the trash can in that dialog box) to make a new action. Open an image. Press the circle, or record button, (it will turn red) and go about the steps you always do to make a thumbnail. When you're done, click the stop button (it has a square on it). Open another image and press play (a triangle pointing to the right). It does exactly what you did with the last image. Neat huh? Keep in mind that the action will do EXACTLY what you did with the last image.

Since some images are tall or wide, I have two identical actions with the exception of when I change the image size, one makes the height 80 and the other make the width 80. To make a lot of thumbnails, you can just open a bunch (I open all the ones that need to be 80 high or 80 wide at once) and just keep pressing play. You can even save the files to a certain directory (another one when making thumbnails) and close them.

If you don't want to do one or more steps, there are little checkboxes by each step you take. Uncheck the ones you don't want to use. Actions that don't have all of the steps enabled will have red checks. There are also little triangles by the action title or folder of actions. You can click these to expand or collapse the actions (as in viewing the steps or just the title).

Another great application for "Actions" is wide screen captures from DVDs or videos. Since these are uniform images, you can crop the same way on multiple images. This is just the beginning, I'm sure. This has been such a revelation for me that I had to share the knowledge.

Making Waves

corey's interviews
history with kelly
copal's queue
site of the month
the flub report
wallpapers/quotes
graphic sets
characters
scenes
downloads
rare pictures
facts
books
columns

Copal's Queue
introduction
thumbnails
seamless bg
frames
webrings
yahoo
graphics pop
graphics pop ii
loading
diamond bg
striped bg
text
transparent gifs
seamless frames
guides
transforming
mouseovers
tables
cleaning up
flyout window
image maps
programs i love
actions
cropping

get this countdown
for your website

random quote:

about back-to-titanic.com | contact us