How can I make photoshop actions "work" without offering TONS of resistance?

Forum|Forum|4 years ago
May 4, 2021
4 replies
2568 views

I am a heavy user of Photoshop actions, but I find myself having a lot of problems when using them. My two main problems are below. Please tell me if a solution already exist and if similar requests have been formulated to Adobe team.

1. Firstly, is it possible to disable all possible popup messages coming out of executing actions? It seems to me as it is totally contrary to the use of actions, that are supposed to get us to "play" actions instead of doing things manually. I am looking for a way to disable all popups, questions, dialog boxes by letting a default behaviour do the job SILENTLY. For example, I don't want Photoshop to ask me if I want to merge all layers. Of course I want to merge them, I never ever anwsered no to that question, ever. I am calling the action. I want the Photoshop actions to think by themselves a bit. This means also that when a error occur, I want it saved somewhere maybe, but I don't want the whole thing to stop and serve me a popup because that almost always happen, rendering most actions useless as soon as the situation, layer names or whatever is not perfect.

2. I need my actions to think in relative terms way more, like always, not absolutes that I know will lead me nowhere. When I select a layer, I want the action to remember that I selected the active, first, last, previous, next layer, not the layer "Layer 1". When I make a selection or apply a brush, I need the action to remember that I covered half the document, not 39 pixels. When I move a layer, I don't want the action to save that I moved it "under Layer 5", I want it to remember that it moved two layers up.

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JJMack

Community Expert

Actions do not Think, Actions do not Remeber, Actions Can select visible later relatively and have steps that perform relative to a percentage. Actions can use very little logic without using Photoshop scripts. You can only insert conditional Action steps to play other Action. There is only small limited set of document and layer conditions and action can test.

Action are a recorded sequences of Photoshop Steps that have recorded settings for each step. However, you can make some steps interactive so you can change the steps recorded settings when the step plays or you can accept the recorded settings displayed. The only deviation from the sequences of recorded steps is the insertion of conditional steps. A Conditional steps can end the action sequence of steps and switch action to play and different action or continue on with the actions recorded steps.

Action can include Script Steps. Script can use logic perform Photoshop processing in a logical way the can change processing based on conditions, sizes, values, options, etc. Scripts are little computer programs that process document using photoshop steps. So a little script can add more logic to a action then any conditional step.

Crafting Actions Package UPDATED Aug 10, 2014 Added Conditional Action steps to Action Palette Tips.
Contains

Action Actions Palette Tips.txt
Action Creation Guidelines.txt
Action Dealing with Image Size.txt
Action Enhanced via Scripted Photoshop Functions.txt
CraftedActions.atn Sample Action set includes an example Watermarking action
Sample Actions.txt Photoshop CraftedActions set saved as a text file.
More then a dozen Scripts for use in actions

Example
Download

JJMack

Bojan Živković11378569

Community Expert

My $0.02 for this part: "I want it to remember that it moved two layers up."

You can use keyboard shortcuts to move layers up or down where only relative position will be remembered like move one layer up.

Some things for this part "I need the action to remember that I covered half the document, not 39 pixels." can be done by setting Ruler unit to percent but only some things like when using vector paths.