Journal Post 7

When looking for Photoshop scripting tutorials I came across this one that I really liked. I learned about these things called Actions which are really handy. I use Photoshop a lot but I've never known about them. They let you record any actions you do within Photoshop so you can execute those same set of actions again with one click. It actually sounds really similar to writing a script, except without having to write code. I can think of many cases where Actions would come in handy.

The tutorial also talks a bit about scripting, but not in too much detail. He demonstrated a script he made that lets him easily rename layers. It may not seem like a bid deal, since it's not that hard to rename layers in the first place, but it does look very useful. First of all, he assigned a hotkey to the script, which is convenient. He also set up the script so there are preset names assigned to specific letters/numbers. For example, when he types in "2" for the name, it automatically names the layer "shadow". A script like this would be nice to have because in some projects I do I'm constantly renaming layers to things like "shadow" or "highlight".

Productivity tips in Photoshop from ShiningCameraVideo on Vimeo.