Photoshop CC: The Missing Manual, 2nd Edition

The Actions Panel

You record, play, and edit keystrokes, using the Actions panel (Figure 18-1). Choose Window→Actions to display it in the panel dock on the right side of your screen (its icon is a triangular “play” symbol).

Figure 18-1. You can rename, duplicate, and delete actions just like layers and channels. Shift-click or ⌘-click (Ctrl-click) to activate multiple actions so you can add them to an action set—a folder you can use to organize actions—or delete them. To view each step inside an action, click the little flippy triangle next to the action’s name. Among Photoshop’s built-in actions is the Mixer Brush Cloning Paint Setup by Photoshop-painting pioneer John Derry (www.pixlart.blogspot.com). Double-click it in the Actions panel’s list, and Photoshop adds a slew of well-organized layers to the current document that you can then use to turn your photo into a painting. For more on this action, see the Tip back on page 536.

The panel’s controls are pretty straightforward. The Stop, Record, and Play buttons do what you’d expect: They stop, record, and play actions. The “Create new set” icon at the bottom of the panel (it looks like a folder) lets you store actions in a set just like you can store layers in a group. You can create a brand-new action by clicking the “Create new action” icon, and duplicate an action by dragging it onto that same icon or Option-dragging (Alt-dragging ...