Automated Tasks

What is an automated task?
An automated task is a task you would like to repeat several times and have it done automatically so you don’t have to do it manually every time. If you don’t want to read the tutorial, watch the video here. Just a reminder all of the videos are free here so watch them all you like.

What type of task would I want to automate?
We all have tedious projects that we would like to get done, that would require us to re-size photos, create thumbnails, or add watermarks to countless numbers of pictures. This is a task for automation. Here in this tutorial we’re going to be automating the task creating thumbnails.

The Actions Palette
The actions palette in photoshop allows you to record tasks that you’re doing. The first thing you want to do is open that up and create a new task. Call it anything you want (make it have something to do with what you’re trying to accomplish). In this case we called it “createThumb(75×75).” After we have it created, we’re going to press record and it will start recording my tasks.

While Recording Tasks
Make sure you open and close during your recording! Now, I’m going to open my picture, and select the crop tool. While the crop tool is selected, I’m going to manually put in the properties dialog the width an height, I’ll just make them the same so that my crop turns out perfectly square. Now, I’m going to hit Enter to crop the picture. Then I’ll hit the hotkey ctrl+alt+shif+s or go to file>save for web. Then I’ll go into the image size dialog and enter in my new size (75×75) and hit save. I’ll save it into my thumbs category. Then I’m going to close the picture and say “don’t save changes.” Now I’m going to stop my recording.

Automating the recording
Now I’m going to apply the recording to a folder. Go to File>automate>batch, and then in this dialog box, make sure that “override open functions,” “ignore color profile warnings,” and “suppress file opening dialog” are all checked. Now, select the folder, select the action set and action, and for errors down at the bottom select “log errors to file” and select a file. Now, you’re just going to hit “ok” and watch it run through your whole thing.

Check your work
Check your work to see if it’s how you want it. if not, you can repeat the process while selecting different portions of the screen.

Best Practices
You should probably backup your pictures before you do this because you run the risk of destroying them all if you do a step incorrectly.

Watch the video tutorial
I made this tutorial into a video and you can watch it Here.