Actions in PS, or how to cope with a mountain of photos

Hello habra

Faced this situation the other day: I went to shoot a sports event - as a result, about 700 frames came out of it.
Well, after the event, it would be necessary to put this photo report on the Internet. But for starters, you need to crop the pictures (4272 * 2848 will be a bit more), sign (so that the work would not be stolen) and shrink (because the photo without compression weighs a lot).

a little theory of
action - this is such a convenient thing, but for some reason very few people use it that allows you to record your actions. In other words, it is the automation of uniform work

Previously, usually about 500 frames came out of the photoset, of which I chose the best - and in the future I worked with only 30-40 pictures. But here the case is different - bigair snowboarding competitions. What is meant by a series of photos. 40 frames for the final report will certainly not be enough.

Well, now, in fact, I will tell you how to create an action with the help of Photoshop and a few minutes spent that you may use in everyday life.



Step 0.
First, take off the photo from the boot into the lightroom, and convert them from raw to jpeg.

Step 1. Prediction
Launch your favorite PS. Press Alt-F9 or View - Action . Hurrah! We see the action panel - now the action itself!
Create a new action.



Call it.



If you want, you can assign a keyboard shortcut and also add your actions to previously created folders.
Now after clicking on record , recording of everything that you do will begin.

Step 2. Actions of the action itself.
Clicked record? Open the photo (by the way, the first action will be registered - open).



Now we need a signature by which we sign photos - just make sure up to this point that it is transparent (if over it should be transparent). We go File - Place ... and open the file with the signature.



Adjust transparency if necessary.
Now click Ctr-Shift-E or Layer - Merge Visible to glue the layers.
And again, press Ctr-Shift-I orImage - Image Size and prescribe the size of the final photo.



That's basically it. Now save the photo and be sure to close the photo - I'll tell you why.
And click on the stop.



Everything - the action for resizing and inserting the signature is ready. But ...

Step 3. One action - wars in the field
But we have 500 photos. After all, we will not open the photo every time and apply action to it !? Photoshop helps us - it has wonderful batch processing. So let's talk about her. I present to you Batch . We go File - Automate - Batch ...



Do not rush to click on Ok. Specify your action. We indicate what we will process - a file or a folder. We also specify the output directory. Well, in principle, that's all - let's go!

Just have to warn that in the action is a strictly recorded sequence. So if the photo will be of different proportions, size or orientation - your action will not work. Therefore, for vertical photos, I created a second action.

Total. Why goat button accordion.
Actions are very powerful tools - allowing you to not only do such basic actions as I cited above, but also simplify the artistic processing of photos.

My first post for Habr. I will be glad to useful criticism. If anyone shares an invite, I will be glad to talk further :)