Actions

Top Ten Action Tips

Action Commands

Photoshop 7 Power Shortcuts would be incomplete if I didn't mention the capability to create your own custom shortcuts using Actions. Actions first arrived in Photoshop 4. Photoshop 5 vastly improved what Actions could do by increasing the number of things that can be recorded. Just about everything can be recorded, with a few notable exceptions. My favorite improvement ”changing a layer's blend mode and opacity ”can now be recorded. You can use Actions to assign an F key (Function key) to any menu command that doesn't already have one, and you can use Actions to record many steps and then play back those steps on a batch of files.

In addition to the actual keyboard shortcuts for the Actions palette, here are 10 general tips to help you when you're working with Actions.