Installing/using "Actions" files

H
Posted By
Hallvard
May 6, 2005
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241
Replies
11
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Closed
I’m using Photoshop elements 2.0 within Windows ME.

I was referred to an excellent location (which I believe belongs to the same site as this), which allows you to freely download all sorts of Styles and other things: <http://share.studio.adobe.com/>

….. I’ve been busy for a while downloading lots effects and styles all day to get me started with web-graphics and stylized text. I believe I’ve found some pretty neat stuff which should get me started.

The "Layer styles" files work fine. I placed them all inside the Adobe\Photoshop Elements 2\Presets\Styles\ folder (I’m using Windows, if that wasn’t obvious from the file-path).

I can access all those styles from within Photoshop elements -the only downside being that there’s a loooong list there now, which would be great to somehow categorize/sub-categorize instead if possible -is it?

For the "Actions" files however I’m having problems. Reading the documentation that came with the downloads I was told to put them in the obviously named action folder, which on my system I found to be:
Adobe\Photoshop Elements 2\Presets\Photoshop Actions\

But not really knowing Photoshop elements I really didn’t know where to find them, so I found this page:
<http://graphicssoft.about.com/od/pselements/qt/actions.htm>

Where it says that with Photoshop elements I should put them in the Adobe\Photoshop Elements 2\Previews\Effects
folder (after clearing the cache files).

Now I’m a little confused because what’s the "Photoshop Actions" folder for in the first place then?
And If I do have to move them to the "Previews\Effects" folder, which action files rightfully do belong to the other folder. I seem to recall that it wasn’t empty to start with, so I assume there are some files that came with the program.
I don’t see any of the Actions in the "Styles" and "Effects" menues, so I assume I’ve done something wrong, or the files aren’t compatible with Photoshop Elements, and only Photoshop (there was only one Photoshop category at the site, nothing specifically for Elements).

Hallvard
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BB
Barbara_Brundage
May 6, 2005
Don’t worry about the PS Actions folder–that’s not for your use. Sue’s article is missing an important step: the creation of the thumbnail. More details on that here:

<http://digitalmedia.oreilly.com/2005/02/23/PSelement3.html>

However, while many of the actions from atncentral.com will work, most actions found on the Adobe Exchange will not work in PE, because they are actually action sets and Elements can’t understand those.
H
Hallvard
May 6, 2005
Thanks for your reply. The whole thing is kind of confusing (at least for a newbie such as myself). I did manage to (somehow) get some new Actions downloaded from the site you mentioned to show up in the "effects" section of Photoshop elements, but something’s defintely wrong.
First of all, they’re not available when I select "All" from the selection menu. But they should be, shouldn’t they, just like with the existing effects? But if I use that same selection menu to select some other category I see them!

Now, if I do choose one of the new categories, all I see are two identical icons (a small picture of a yacht -same as I’ve seen before, with all the other preset effects), side by side, both of them labelled "Original". If I click or double-click on them nothing happens. I expected the "Apply" button to work, but here it’s only greyed out.

Having read that article which you gave me the link for through several times (it was a bit confusing) it seems that you have to have Photoshop itself to be able to install them for use with Elements. There’s some talk about an image file which I didn’t fully understand, but comparing with an actions file which I downloaded, made specifically for Elements (there were only two or 3 of them -the rest were simply labelled "Photoshop"), I noticed that at least one of them had two files in its folder: an "actions" file, and a ".psd" file. I suppose this is some kind of image.
So does this mean that I can’t use any of the actions unless I have Photoshop to make it with first?
If that’s the case I guess I can forget about the whole thing altogether.

Are there any websites dedicated to Actions (and other files) especially for Photoshop Elements? I started downloading actions in the first place because I found a few that were said to be able to make web-buttons from scratch, which is ideal for me right now.
BB
Barbara_Brundage
May 6, 2005
Okay. First of all, no you don’t need photoshop to install actions for Elements, although you do need it to create them. If you do not have an action player like the one referenced in Sue’s article, you must have a thumbnail or the action cannot launch. The thumbnail is the psd file. You must have this file if you are installing your action directly into PE or it won’t work, because the thumbnail is how you launch it from the Effects palette.

Where you see the action will directly depend on where you put it, but if it is properly installed (not via a player–ding actions that way is a whole ‘nother thing) you should see it both in All actions and then under the name of a folder if you installed it in a folder rather than loose in the actions folder.

No, there is no website dedicated to PE actions. You will find a few on atncentral.com, but mostly the people who create actions don’t know or care a lot about PE.

Personally, I would really recommend getting good and familiar with using PE before branching out into things like actions. Many, maybe even most, actions you download are not totally automated. You still need to provide input as they run, and you’ll get much better results if you understand what the action what the action wants you to do. If you have to enter settings for a filter before the action applies it, for instance, you need to understand the filters enough to know what you want to enter in that dialog box.

You absolutely should not need actions to make web buttons. Just draw a shape with the shape tool, apply a bevel and a layer style and maybe a text layer (you can apply styles to that, too), and you’re done.
BB
Barbara_Brundage
May 6, 2005
Actually, I take back what I said about no website dedicated to actions. If you are using PE 2, you can download Lings actions player and snap actions here:

<http://www.geocities.com/rnlnero/PE2stuff2.html>

You may find this way easier, but you can’t just install additional actions you find elsewhere with this player–they must be specially adapted for use in PE. If they have been, the download site will say so.
H
Hallvard
May 9, 2005
I’ve tried to figure this stuff out now, but to no avail. It all seems pretty complicated, and none of the tools mention allow me to import the actions that I’ve downloaded.
From the documentation it seems that they’re supposed to import actions made specifically for that tool, or come with actions.
I’ve tried "SnapActions" which you gave a link to here, as well as the free actions player available from here: <http://hiddenelements.com/freeactionsplayer.html>

I see that this project is fruitless, and as PSE obviously isn’t meant to be used for Actions, out of the box at least, I guess I should concentrate on learning to use it the normal way instead.

Actually I don’t even know what "actions" are -I just found a few by chance that sounded useful to me, with names like "bevels", "3D" and "web buttons". I believe they’re sort of "recordings" of how to do a specific job. So instead of having to go through all of the steps for creating something I can use an action to automate it. Is that correct?
Sounds useful if I’m right, but I’m probably spending more time on trying to install the darn files than actually getting something useful out of PSE!

Now, why did they put the "actions" folder there in the first place when nothing seems to work with it? It’s very confusing for a beginner. Naturally, when I see a folder named "Photoshop actions", and later find free downloadable "action" files I want to try them out, assuming they go in the mentioned folder.

Frustrating!!! 🙁
Is this something the programmers at Adobe have looked into?
BB
Barbara_Brundage
May 9, 2005
Well, I think once you’re more comfortable with PE you won’t find this all so hard, but to reiterate: just because there is an action for doing something doesn’t necessarily mean it’s automatic. Many actions just save steps by lining up and launching each step of the process individually, but you still have to interact and provide the same input you would if you were doing it step by step yourself.

Even in Photoshop, you don’t necessarily put actions in the actions folder to use them.

Yes, Adobe knows about the limitations of actions in Elements. Easy creation/use of actions is one of the features you get for the extra money when you buy the big program.

I really don’t know many people who would use actions to create web buttons, even experienced users of full Photoshop. You can do this without actions just fine, really you can.
GE
Gary_Elliott
May 15, 2005
Well, if not Actions, then does anyone know of a utility to allow me to automate repetitive steps? For istance, I’m taking pictures of a local high school team and will be giving them to the kids at the end of the season. I take a couple hundred shots at every game, maybe half keepers. I have to go through and touch up each one and crop to 4×6, then save, select a different folder, set the quality to high, etc., for each and every one. I can’t find anywhere that PE3 lets me make those my personal defaults. In my earlier days of DOS, I had a keystroke capture utility that would allow me to capture all the keystrokes for an acitivity like this and then assign them to one key. Anything like that for PE3?

I realize that for quality work, you folks spend hours on a single picture. This is QUANTITY work as I try and get at least a shot of each kid in each game. Any ideas? Thanks. Gary
BB
Barbara_Brundage
May 15, 2005
Can’t Process Multiple Files do what you want?
GE
Gary_Elliott
May 16, 2005
Nope. Process multiple has very limited abilities unfortunately. For instance, you can have it set three basic parameters and overall USM but that’s it. What I usually have to do is look at a few shots to gauge the overall brightness of the day and use the (I forget the term…) function to set shadow/highlights. It is set to 50% by default and I will usually find that a setting of 30 – 40% works for most of the shots. You can’t do this in any automated way so for each shot I select the function, slide the setting to xx%, crop the best area to 4×6, touch up some USM, close, save, select the new folder, tell it I don’t want a low quality save (move to 10), leave the name the same, and finally save it.

I did about 60 shots last night and it took roughly two hours of not quite dedicated time. My wrists were killing me and I have an adjustable chair arm and a wrist protecting mouse pad 🙂

This isn’t a gripe about PE3. It is just an explanation of why I would like to see actions or some similar controllable automation added to PE3. My Mac user friend is always rubbing in that I should dump the PC and run PE3 on a Mac where they have a built in scripting language which he says allows exactly what I want. 🙂
BB
Barbara_Brundage
May 16, 2005
Alas, your mac friend is mistaken. PE 3 is not scriptable with applescript. What you might be able to do is to get someone with PS CS to write an action for you, but you’d still have to apply it to each photo individually (can’t run actions on a folder the way you can in PS).

Your other option would be to upgrade to PS.

EDIT It’s not really scriptable with Automator in Tiger, either, but many photoshop-like filters and commands are available via the finder with Tiger’s core image, so it’s not impossible that you could script something like this outside of PE on a mac with Tiger. I don’t have Tiger yet, so can’t say for sure.
GE
Gary_Elliott
May 16, 2005
Well, something good after all – I can’t wait to rub his nose in the lack of scripting capability 🙂 I’m sure he spoke without actually trying it. He could never pass up an opportunity to tell me why I should have gone Apple 🙂

The cost of upgrading to PSCS2 is far greater than the value I would get out of it. I used Paintshop prior to this and did have a form of automation available. Maybe I’ll have to try version 9 and see if I can get the heavy lifting done there and then use PSE3 for the special photos I want to do more with. I can pick up PSP pretty cheap when they are offering rebates so might be worth a try. Too bad Adobe isn’t offering a middle line product, seems to be quite a spread between what you can do with PSE3 and PSCS2.

Thanks for your input though.

Gary

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