Creating Custom Actions in Adobe Photoshop

 

In this Tutorial, you will learn how to create a custom action and how to automate a batch in order to resize multiple images with ease.

STEP ONE: Create a custom action that you want to repeat.

1. Open an image that you want to resize in Photoshop.

 

2. Create an action that you want to repeat (in this tutorial, we will be resizing all of our images to 640 X 425) by performing the following steps. Click on your actions tab (1) as shown below.  Notice there is a folder called “Default Actions”.  We are going to create a new folder called “Custom Actions”.  Click the round circle (2) as shown below

 

 

Click "New Set" and call it Custom Actions.   Click OK.

 

 

Click the round circle again and this time select “New Action”

 

 

 

Give your action a name (i.e. 640 X 425), then click "Record".

 

 

3. Now you can make whatever adjustments you want to repeat for a set of images to save as a custom action.  In this case, we are resizing the image.  Click Image>Image Size shown below.

 

  

Type 640 for the width.  If the box next to “constrain proportions” is checked, when you type 640 for the width, Photoshop will automatically adjust the height for you.  (Note:  don’t worry if your image is not 640 X 425).  Click OK.

 

 

 

4. Now we need to save this action by clicking the “stop playing/recording” button shown below.

 

Now that we have saved our custom action, we can apply this action to as many images as we need.  We do that by automating a batch.

 

STEP TWO: Automate the batch.

Note:  Before you automate the batch, you may want to create a folder somewhere on your computer where you would like the resized images to be saved to.

 

1. Go to File>Automate>Batch shown below.

 

 

2. Next to “Set” select “Custom Actions”. 

 

3.  Select the action you just created under the "Action" pull down menu, which is 640 X 425.

4. Select the source folder that contains the images you want to resize.

5. Select the destination folder you want your modified images to be saved to.

6. Select how you want to name the files under the File Naming group.

7. It should look like the picture below.  When finished, click OK.

 

8. Now you are given the option to set the quality for each image you are resizing.

 

 

 

Once you have selected your desired settings, click ok.  (Note:  A new window will open for each image). 

 

Voila! You have just resized any number of images quickly.

 

If you want to perform your created action on just one image do the following:

 

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

2.      Select your action tab below.

3.      Click on the arrow next to your “Custom Folder”

4.      Click the Down arrow by “640 X 425”

5.      Double click on “Image Size”.

 

 

 

Photoshop has now performed the custom action of resizing the image to 640 X 425.  Photoshop has created some “Default Actions” that you can use as well.   To access them, click on the arrow next to the “Default Actions.atn” Folder (shown above). 

 

You can use this tutorial to create any number of actions that you use on a frequent basis.