Recording actions

Keep in mind the following guidelines when recording actions:

• You can record most--but not all--commands in an action.
• You can record operations that you perform with the marquee, move, polygon, lasso, magic wand, crop, slice, magic eraser, gradient, paint bucket, type, shape, notes, eyedropper, and color sampler tools--as well as those that you perform in the History, Swatches, Color, Paths, Channels, Layers, Styles, and Actions palettes.

In ImageReady, you can drag a command from the History palette to the action in the Actions palette in which you want the command recorded. You cannot drag italicized commands from the History palette to the Actions palette. (Commands in italics are nonactionable.)

• Results depend on file and program setting variables, such as the active layer or the foreground color. For example, a 3-pixel Gaussian blur won't create the same effect on a 72-ppi file as on a 144-ppi file.  Nor will Color Balance work on a grayscale file.
• When recording actions that include dialog box and palette settings, keep in mind that only changed settings are recorded. For example, to record an action that sets a particular preference to its current value, you must first change that preference to some other value, and then record the action as you change the preference back to its original value.
• Modal operations and tools--as well as tools that record position--use the units currently specified for the ruler. A modal operation or tool is one that requires you to press Enter or Return to apply its effect, such as the transformation and crop commands. Tools that record position include the marquee, slice, gradient, magic wand, lasso, shape, path, eyedropper, and notes tools.

In Photoshop, when recording an action that will be played on files of different sizes, set the ruler units to percent. As a result, the action will always play back in the same relative position in the image.

• You can record the Play command listed on the Actions palette menu to cause one action to play another.

Related Subtopics:

Creating a new action
Recording paths (Photoshop)
Inserting stops
Setting modal controls
Excluding commands
Inserting nonrecordable commands (Photoshop)
Specifying an output folder (ImageReady)
Recording image size options (ImageReady)
Inserting optimization settings for selected slices (ImageReady)