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The big news in the niche of Photoshop Actions
this month is, of course, the melding of the Action Xchange
(http://www.actionxchange.com) into the Adobe domain. If you
were unaware of this please check it out. It seems our friend
Joe Cheng has gone on to bigger and better things. This had me
worried when Colin Smith brought it to my attention, but after
spending some time in the new Xchange, my fears have been
alleviated somewhat.
The navigation is streamlined. The interface,
though very corporate looking, is extremely functional, and if
you are a fan of GoLive, you now have a place for uploading and
downloading those actions as well. They have maintained the
Actions Archive, upload and download capabilities, and even the
forum. So good fortune to you Joe; you developed a community and
started a market in design that has literally changed my career.
Now to the strange portents: I literally cut my
teeth on Photoshop duplicating what I saw people creating with
actions on the Xchange. For years a few of us struggled to get
people interested in these powerful macros, as actions were
basically glossed over by the 'Big Guys'. With Adobe's
acquisition of the Action Xchange, it seems we have succeeded in
getting the attention we craved, but to what end? Still in
development…
On with the effect. This week I want to share
with you a combination of techniques. I covered this in a
companion article on the Photoshop Café
(http://www.photoshopcafe.com) as well, but I felt it would be
of interest to the readers here as well.
The premise of this tutorial is this: what if we
combine automation techniques? In particular, what if we develop
elements of a layer style (create custom patterns, gradients,
curves, etc.), save them in 2 or more layer styles and then
incorporate those styles into one action?
This would have the effect of applying multiple
styles in a single step.
To begin with, we need to develop our Style
elements. For this example I'm using a couple custom patterns
I've created, which can be found on the zip file I've included
with this tutorial.
In order for the completed action (which I'm
about to make) to work, Photoshop needs to be able to find these
patterns, so save them to the Photoshop>Presets>Patterns folder.
You may now create styles using these patterns.
I'm going to start recording my action. I won't
go through the process for the effect I'm creating, as I'm
including the action in the zip file also. One thing you want to
keep in mind during your own action recording is to save the
styles you apply to a particular layer. Though for this action
that is not required, if you enjoy a particular effect you have
applied to a layer, you may want to use it at a later date in
other actions or just to dress up an image you are working on.
If you take a close look at the image, you may
notice various elements mentioned above. I used 2 of the
patterns shown before, and during the course of the action saved
3 separate styles that I can use later. One little trick I
especially like is applying a layer style to a layer, merging it
all into an empty layer and re-applying the same style to the
layer. Make sense? |