Back to Basics : Photoshop Actions - How to record an action in Photoshop CC

Action is an amazing feature of Photoshop. An action is a recorded collection of steps that can be applied to an image. Actions in Photoshop come in handy when you want to apply the same set of steps on a large number of files.

For example, I want to reduce the size of an image to 500px X 500px. I can manually perform every step on an image. Not a problem. I can do it for 5,10 or 20 images. What if I have to deal with 100 or 1000 images. It might take hours or days to complete this job. This is when Photoshop Actions come to the rescue.

To execute action :
 
Step 1: Recording an Action

Step 2: Performing the action

Recording an Action:

To record an action, Go to Windows - Actions (or) just click F9 to open the actions window.
  

Open the image on which you want to perform the action.


Click the drop-down menu in the top right corner. Click New Action to open the dialog box.



Type a name for the action. In this example, I have planned to crop the image to a 500px  X  500px.
So I have named it "resize".




Note the record button is switched on automatically. Now you are all set to record the action.


Click the crop icon on the toolbar.

In order to crop the image into 500px x 500px, I need to set the values on the top where the crop icon is selected. On the right of the icon, you have a drop-down menu.

Select the "W x H Resolution" option and enter the values in the two boxes.



Now you have a preview of how the image will look after cropping.



Press enter. Save the image and close it.

The recorded action looks something like this.





Performing the action:
 In order to perform the action, you need two folders. One folder where you have your original images and a second folder to save the images after performing the actions.

I am gonna have two folders named "Original images" and "Resized images".


Note: Always have a back up of your original images in another folder before playing with actions.Because once you make an error there is no going back to retrieve it.

Copy all your images into "Original images" folder. These images will remain the same after applying the actions. The resized images will be in another folder called "Resized images". So no worries.

Open PS and click on File - Automate - Batch.


The batch window opens will a lot of different options.
 

You can see that the action you recorded recently is automatically added.

Below that is an option called "Source". Now you have to select the folder in which you have the original images. Click the Choose button and select the folder.

There is another option called "Destination" In the same way, we have to choose the folder where you want to save the resized images.

Keep in mind the "Override action Save as commands". Use Override Action "Save As" if you want to override the Save As set in the action.

Click "OK".Now check both the folders. You can apply this action to any number of files.