Adobe Photoshop CS4 - Manual (Page 628)

621 USING PHOTOSHOP CS4
Automating tasks
Last updated 1/10/2010
View actions by name only
❖ Choose Button Mode from the Actions panel menu. Choose Button Mode again to return to list mode.
Note: You can’t view individual commands or sets in Button mode.
Select actions in the Actions panel
❖ Click an action name. Shift-click action names to select multiple, contiguous actions, and Ctrl-click (Windows) or
Command-click (Mac
OS) action names to select multiple, discontiguous actions.
Play an action on a file
Playing an action executes the action’s recorded commands in the active document. (Some actions require that you
make a selection before playing; some can be executed on an entire file.) You can exclude specific commands from an
action or play only a single command. If the action includes a modal control, you can specify values in a dialog box or
use a modal tool when the action pauses.
Note: In Button mode, clicking a button executes the entire action—although commands previously excluded are not
executed.
1 If necessary, select objects on which to play the action, or open a file.
2 Do one of the following:
• (Illustrator) To play a set of actions, select the set name, and click the Play button in the Actions panel, or choose
Play from the panel menu.
• To play an entire single action, select the action name, and click the Play button in the Actions panel, or choose Play
from the panel menu.
• If you assigned a key combination to the action, press that combination to play the action automatically.
• To play only a part of an action, select the command from which you want to start playing, and click the Play button
in the Actions panel, or choose Play from the panel menu.
• To play a single command, select the command, and then Ctrl-click (Windows) or Command-click (Mac OS) the
Play button in the Actions panel. You can also press Ctrl (Windows) or Command (Mac OS), and double-click the
command.
In Photoshop, to undo an action, take a snapshot in the History panel before you play an action, and then select the
snapshot to undo the action.
Specify playback speed
You can adjust an action’s playback speed or pause it to help you debug an action.
1 Choose Playback Options from the Actions panel menu.
2 Specify a speed, and click OK:
Accelerated Plays the action at normal speed (the default).
Note: When you play an action at accelerated speed, the screen may not update as the action executes—files may be
opened, modified, saved, and closed without ever appearing on-screen, enabling the action to execute more quickly. If you
want to see the files on-screen as the action executes, specify the Step By Step speed instead.
Step By Step Completes each command and redraws the image before going on to the next command in the action.
Pause For __ Seconds Specifies the amount of time the application should pause between carrying out each command
in the action.