One of photoshop's most powerful tools: script (1)

One of Adobe Photoshop's most powerful tools is not an image editing tool at all, but an "Actions" feature. The use of this feature is actually very simple, but unfortunately, very few new users of Photoshop know that this feature exists, and even leave it unused.

New users of Photoshop are very anxious to start editing right away, so they only use the most basic editing tools, and they work hard to learn a lot of features of the software. With the help of teaching materials and prompt information, they have become more and more proficient in the program after repeated trial and error.

At this time, these users began to use plug-in filters for more rich results. There are many such filters on the market and they can be downloaded for free from the internet. These filters have a variety of control parameters that allow you to adjust the effect of the filter. Some filters are dedicated to file compression, others can make special effects for text objects, and some filters can create special effects for the entire image.

The problem is that it may take several steps to produce an effect. Unless you make a lot of notes or have excellent memory, it's almost impossible to repeat something again. At this point, you need to use the "Actions" function. It is located in the drop-down window at the top of Photoshop's main interface. The "script" program works in the same way as "macros" in word processing software. A "macro" is a combination of a series of functions recorded in a file that can be started by hotkeys.

"Scripts" can combine Photoshop's editing tools and plug-in filters in one file and start with a single mouse click. Some of these "scripts" can implement more than 50 functions, use multiple plug-in filters, and add dozens of parameters. Even if you can remember how to achieve a certain effect, it is not an easy task to correctly select the parameters in each function. In this regard, "scripts" save you a lot of time.

"Script" is mainly used for repetitive tasks or for making very complex special effects. To create a new "script," simply click on the "New Action" button. At this point, there is a red box indicating that you are currently recording a script. When you have finished running all the features or plug-ins, stop recording. Each "script" has a specific name and is added to the list of scripts. The next time you want to use the above combination, just start the "script" and all the effects will be automatically loaded into the image.

To help you better understand the "script", we use the editing photos as an example to introduce the use of the "script". Most of these methods were obtained through trial and error and eventually stored these methods as "scripts." We will first perform some repetitive tasks and then make more complex "scripts."

Reduce particles

When you are dealing with a photo taken on a film with higher speed, you can use the Grain Rediuction. This script first uses the Despeckle filter and then the sharpen filter (Sharpen). Although the previous filter can remove a large number of particles, it blurs the image at the same time. Therefore, you also need to use the sharpening filter again. In this way, the image is clear, but the particle phenomenon is reduced.

Conversion of files

Another script you need to use is the so-called "MacTiff script". We usually use PCs to edit images, and most magazines we deal with use Macs. When we have made all the images in an article, we need to use a "batch script" to process a set of images.

At this point, you just have to sit there and watch the script open a frame of image, convert it to a Tiff file, set it to Mac format, and save and close them. Who says that PC and Mac are incompatible?

When we need to sell a large number of images to other companies for making teaching CDs, we can use a specially crafted script. This script can reduce the size of a large number of images to their original 25%, sharpen them, and finally convert them into Mac Tiff files. This script can easily process multiple files with more than 650MB total data into a new set of CD images. When you work in a script, you have time to do other things.

In the script menu, there are several versions of compression settings such as JPEG, Wavelet, Fractal, and so on. When you archive the saved image, you can open the batch script and start the conversion process. This eliminates the need for separate file conversion software to convert files, but it can always work in Photoshop (some file conversion software is not fully Photoshop compatible, especially for Tiff files).