Editing (a not-my-own) Action

[JNDGroup]

I’ve imported a fair number of Photoshop actions from Envato but I’m looking to edit some of them. Many of them operate similarly. Put the action files in the Actions preset folder, same with brushes and patterns. My problem is that the authors of these tend to name the brushes for each one “brush” and patterns “pattern”.

So if you want to have more than one of these actions in your actions list, the program is looking for a specific brush but cannot discern one from another. Same with “pattern”, etc.

So, I am attempting to relabel each brush with a number or expanded name (Watercolor 4 Brush 2 for example). However I can’t seem to edit the action to find a more specific brush, etc. Any advice on how to edit a pre-made action? I can create and edit my own actions no problem (I’m not whizbang at it but I know the theory) but I can’t seem to find an Edit mode for other actions.

Thanks

[jane-e]

@JNDGroup 

When you start editing your actions, the first thing to do is to make a copy of the action so you can go back to it.

There are various ways to edit, including:

• drag and drop to reorder the steps
• drag a step from one action to another (Option + drag to copy)
• trash unwanted steps
• create a new action with the desired step, then drag that step to your longer action and delete the old unwanted step
• double-click a step to edit it

When you are finished, save the Action Set (the folder) from the panel menu. If you don't save the set (.atn), then you risk losing the actions in that set.

Jane

[Stephen Marsh]

My preference is to use steps as suggested by Jane, re-recording/replacing existing steps with new steps as required.

For completeness, it is possible to convert .ATN files into .XML files, edit the XML and convert back to an action using scripts from xbytor in xtools:

https://sourceforge.net/projects/ps-scripts/files/xtools/v2.3/