Hands on: Automate common tasks

Actions in Elements
At first glance, Photoshop Elements doesn’t appear to support Actions, but with a little coercion, it can be made to dance to Actions’ tune. Although you can’t record Actions in Elements, you can download and use some Actions that have been created by and for Photoshop users. Not all Photoshop Actions will work in Elements, as some make use of Photoshop tools and features not supported in Elements. Many, however, will work perfectly.

In Photoshop Elements up to version 4, Actions can be run through the Styles and Effects palette. This involves creating a 64x64 pixel PSD file to serve as a palette icon for the action. The .atn action file should be placed in the Program Files\Adobe Photoshop Elements x\Previews\Effects folder. Next you need to delete the three cache files - CatagoryCache.che, ListCache.che and ThumbNailCache.che - from the Program files\Adobe Photoshop Elements x\Previews\ cache\effects cache folder. When you relaunch Elements, the caches are rebuilt and your new actions will appear in the Actions and Effects palette.

For version 5 of Photoshop Elements, go to C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Adobe\Photoshop Elements\5.0\Photo Creations\special effects. Create a folder here called actions and put your .atn files in it. This folder will appear on the Special Effects menu of the Artwork and Effects palette. You’ll still need to create a thumbnail file for each action, but it isn’t necessary to delete the cache files as these are rebuilt each time Elements 5.0 is launched.

You can find out more about using actions in Photoshop Elements and other undocumented aspects of all versions of Elements on Richard Lynch’s website at www.hiddenelements.com.

What can scripts do?
A script is simply a sequence of commands, so you can use scripts to do almost anything you’d do manually. There are some things that are difficult to accomplish with scripts because they require judgement. Colour balancing or levels adjustments, for example, need you to make qualitative judgements. Another thing that can throw a script is image size. On a 50x50-pixel image, a 10-pixel border is a thick line. On a 10-megapixel photo, it’s barely noticeable.

There are two ways you can handle this with scripts. One is to produce scripts to deal with specific problems or images. Alternatively, you can halt your script to request user input, so that where a colour or levels adjustment is made, the script opens the relevant dialogue box and waits for you to make the adjustment. This requires your supervision and takes longer, but does allow for more flexibility - and it’s still far preferable to doing everything manually.

If you’re looking for a script for something specific, first check your photo editor’s built-in scripts, then take a look at the web resources, as there’s a good chance someone has produced a script that will do the same thing, or similar, which you can edit.

Recording and editing scripts
Scripts that produce particular effects, such as ageing or metallic-type effects, can provide a useful tutorial role, as well as get the job done. For more straightforward tasks, such as resizing and file format conversion, provided your application has a script recording function (Photoshop, Paint Shop Pro, Ulead Photo Impact), recording your own is easy and takes a few minutes.

In Paint Shop Pro, press the Start Script Recording button on the Script toolbar to get on with it. When you’ve finished recording the script, press the Save button to save it and add it to the pop-up menu. If you take a wrong turn while recording your script, just undo it; when you save the script there’s an option to remove undone commands and you can save materials settings and dialogue box positions.

As a security measure, Paint Shop Pro saves scripts in two locations - Scripts-Restricted and Scripts-Trusted, both of which are in Documents\My PSP Files. Make sure to save your recorded scripts in the Scripts-Trusted folder. Save downloaded scripts in the Scripts-Restricted folder until you are sure they do what they say they do. Scripts in the Scripts-Restricted folder cannot run certain commands, such as saving and batch processing.