I use Photoshop since few years now but I’ve started using actions only recently. Actions are a series of task you can record and repeat as many time as needed. They can really save you time for repetitive task like resizing, applying a filter and much more.

I am not an action expert but I have some that help a lot. For example, you need to resize 10 images at the same size. You can write a very simple action process your image. When the action is ready, press play and your image is resized, saved an closed.

First locate the action panel on the right of your workspace. It’s usually in the same window as the history. Create a new folder (button at the bottom of the window) and call it whatever you want.

Create a new blank document and save it somewhere (will serve us later), we will apply the different task on it and store them in the action. Create your first action (button a right of the new folder button in the action window), pick a name and press record.

Now everthing you do on your document will be recorded in the action. So if you want to create a resize action, start to resize your image at the dimension you want.

Save your image (not save as), if you have already saved you document it will not ask you where you want to save it so every time you execute this action it will save the image at the same place as the original. Close your image and press the stop button in the action window to stop the recording. You should have something like :

Your action is ready, open the images you have to resize and press the play button. They will be resized, saved and closed.

Next  time we will see how to use actions and the batch processing tool to process an even larger quantity of file in less time.