Photoshop Shortcuts, Actions and Batches
When you are touching up hundreds of photos at a time, shortcuts, actions and batches help make things go faster. This article is about the shortcuts, actions and batches I use to make life easier and make photo restoration not as time consuming. Sorry for all of you Mac users, but I have a PC so the shortcuts I talk about in this article will be different on Macs.
Opening and Closing Photos
Opening photos by clicking File->Open every time and then having to search for your photo in a tiny window can be time consuming. I have my Windows Explorer open or Adobe Bridge and I jump back and forth from Adobe Bridge to Photoshop by using the Alt+Tab shortcut. To close a photo, instead of going to File->Close I use the shortcut Ctrl+W and then I Alt+Tab back over to my Bridge and double click on the next photo I want to open. If you don't have Adobe Bridge, Windows Explorer works well too.
Zooming and Navigating
There are several shortcuts that you should learn if you'll be using Photoshop a lot. I will talk about a few in this article. Two that I'd like to talk about now are zooming and navigating.
To quickly zoom close into a picture hold down Ctrl and hit the + (plus sign). The more you hit "+" the farther you will zoom in. To zoom out hold down Ctrl and hit the - (minus sign).
To quickly navigate around your photo, for example if you are zoomed in closely on subjects face and you want to see the subjects arms, instead of using your arrows along the side and bottom of the picture, hold down the space bar and drag with your mouse. I've found that this is even a faster way than using the navigation menu that is built into Photoshop.
Actions
Actions save a lot of time if you are following the same steps for each photo. When I open a photo I first change the image size to 300 dpi by using the shortcut Ctrl+Alt+I. I then change the levels but using Shift+Ctrl+L. To save even more time so I don't have to type in 300 dpi for every picture I could make an action.
To make an action, open up a picture that is in the group you will be working with. Then click Windows->Actions. After your actions window is open click on "Default Actions" at the top and then go down to the bottom of the window where you'll see little icons. Click the "Create a new action" icon which is next to the trash can icon and looks like a piece of paper (see image below).
Name your action something that will tell you what it does. So if I wanted to make an action that would change the the image size to 300 dpi and change the levels, I would probably name it "300dpi, Auto Levels". You can then choose a "Function Key" and check either "Shift" or "Control" box. This creates another shortcut for you! We like shortcuts! So, for example, if I chose my "Function Key" to be "F2" and I checked my "Shift" box, every time I held down Shift+F2 my "300dpi, Auto Levels" action would occur. You can also select a color for your action.
Next, click "Record". Your action is now recording so the steps you do now will record and automatically do later for other photos. So for my example I would go to Image -> Image Size, and with the "Resample Image" box unchecked I would change the resolution to 300 and click Ok. I would then go to Image->Adjustments->Auto Levels. After I made these two steps I would go to my actions window and hit the "Stop playing/recording" icon at the bottom which is on the far left and looks like a black box (see image below).
Now that this action is created, I would continue to touchup up my photo, changing the levels if the auto levels was too harsh, improving the color and using the cloning tool and healing brush to get rid of dust and scratches. After I saved the photo and closed it, I would Alt+Tab back to my Windows Explorer/Adobe Bridge, and double click on my next photo. When it was opened, I would call my action by holding down Shift+F2 and then repeat the steps I mentioned above, changing the levels if needed and using the cloning tool and healing brush.
Automating Batches
Lets say all that you wanted to do was change the image size of a large group of photos. Maybe your photos were already touched up but you forgot to change the size on all of them. Here is where a batch would come in handy. Another situation where you might want to use a batch is if you wanted to convert all of your Tiff photos into JPEGs or visa versa. Instead of opening each one and saving them individually you can automate a batch and quickly change all of the photos in a folder at once.
I'll use the example for converting a folder of Tiffs to Jpegs. First make a folder inside of your folder of Tiffs called "Jpegs" (you can do this with Windows Explorer: File->New->Folder). Next open up one of your Tiffs in Photoshop. With your Actions window open click on "Default Actions" at the top and then click on "Create New Action" icon at the bottom. Name your action something like "Convert Tiff to Jpeg" and click Ok. Now that your action is recording, go to File->Save As, find your Jpegs folder, change the format to "Jpeg" and click okay. When it asks what quality you want your Jpeg saved as I usually choose "Maximum" and "Baseline ("Standard")" unless I'm putting the photos on the internet or something similar. Click "OK". Now go to File->Close and go over to your actions and hit the "Stop playing/recording" icon on the far left. Now go back to your Windows Explorer (Alt+Tab) and delete the Jpeg you just made in the Jpeg folder.
Now go back to Photoshop (Alt+Tab) and go to File->Automate->Batch. Under the "Actions" drop down box find your action (Convert Tiff to Jpeg). "Source" should be set to "Folder". Click on "Choose" and find your folder that has your Tiffs in it (the folder that you want to change). Click "OK". The four boxes under "Choose" should be unchecked. "Destination" should be set to "Folder". Click "Choose" find your destination folder (Jpegs). If your destination folder was different than where you saved your photo when you made your action you'd want to check the "Override Action "Save As" Command", but since we saved the Jpeg in the Jpegs folder in our action, we want that box unchecked. For the file naming you'll want to have "Document Name" + "Extension". Have Starting serial # be "1". At the bottom where it says "Errors", make sure you have that drop down box set to "Log Errors to File" otherwise it'll stop your batch every time you get an error. Click "Save As" under "Errors" and choose a place for your errors to be logged to. Name your errors document "Log Errors.txt" and click "OK". Your window should now look similar to the image below. Now you're ready to click "OK" on your batch and your photos will start converting.
It's a good idea to test a few photos out before you start going through all of them. Make a test folder and copy a few of your tiffs there and try a batch until you get the hang of it. Batches are a great way to save a lot of time if you have an action that you want to make on a large group of photos.
Shortcuts in general are a great way to save time. It may take a while to get used to them, but the more you use them, the faster you'll get, the easier photo restoration will be.
