Create New Photoshop Action from Existing Action?

[David MMMM]

Is there a way to create a new action from an existing action, without having to record each step again for the new action? I want to create a variation of an existing action.

[Kevin Stohlmeyer]

Select your action in the Actions panel then using the panel menu choose "Duplicate".

[Bojan Živković]

Alt + click on an action or action step(s) and drag to duplicate them. You can duplicate steps within an action or drag them into another action. Additionally, you can rearrange steps simply by dragging them around. Single or multiple steps can also be dragged into another action without duplicating them. Just remember not to press Alt while dragging or releasing.

[Conrad_C]

Another option is to have an action run other actions. If you have actions that work perfectly and all you want to do is make them parts of other actions, you can simply record running those actions. This lets you build more complex actions out of simple ones.

This also makes it easier to update action steps you use in lots of other actions. If you simply copied the steps and later found an error, you would have to fix two actions. If you run one action as a step in another, and there is a problem with the first action, fixing the first action fixes that problem in all actions where the first action was used.

Duplicating an action or steps is better when you actually need to make something different about the steps when used in another action.