Numbering or renaming steps within a Photoshop action

ultrachrome  wrote The actions often have repeated steps and it's very difficult to find my way back to where I was if I'm editing the action or having to stop and restart the action.

Hi,

An action can simply play another action.

One thing you can do — at least while you are editing — is to break the action up into multiple named actions and put them in their own set. Create another “Composite” action to play each of the “sub-actions” in order to play all of the steps. It will make it easier to trouble-shoot and to find your place when the steps are separated out.

You can drag and drop steps from one action to another (Option + Drag to copy).

You could even create several “Composite” actions: one that plays two sub-actions, one that plays three, etc. (Sub-action is not a Photoshop term. I made it up for use here.)

When you are finished, you can either leave it that way or move the steps into one action, whichever makes the most sense to you.

Be sure to select the Action Set and save it from the Actions panel menu so you don’t risk losing your work.

~Jane

You can step through an action and observe each step operation.  If you see you want to change or add some step. You can stop stepping that the action and switch to record mode or use record again on the step you want to change. Add or change the step or steps you want. Then  position to the Step you added or change step back in history if you had played the step and  then continue stepping through the action.  The Action Platte scrolls the steps as you step through the action.  There is not need for an action to fit on your display.  In fact a singe step like a text layer step and layer style and others if fully expanded the single step may not fit on your display. I found an old Action  I used in the past to add a Copyright text layer.  I needed to update the text layer step yearly I have not updated it since 2008 look at the size of the make text layer fully expanded so you can read what has been recorded for the step. It fix not on my display the full step would need a display 3 timed higher than my display.