Building Actions

[AZP Photos]

I have not used actions very much but I'm setting up an action for a few steps that I don't want to take the time setting up all the time. The one I'm working on right now is Frequency Separation. When I record my action I am using Layer 1 and then go through my steps from there. if the layer that I start from says layer 1 all is fine, but if I try to set this up from an image that the layer says background or anything else it doesn't like it. I don't know how to set this up so that it will always work no matter what the layer is named. Thanks for your help.

[PanosFX · Accepted solution]

If you have PS CC:

Add a new action to the existing set, that contains a single step that renames the Background layer, to "Layer 1".

Then insert a conditional step at the beginning of your core action (to do so, click the actions panel menu button, and select "Insert Conditional"). Then:

- Choose the condition "Layer is Background" from the "If Current" menu.

- Select your new little action from the "Then Play Action" menu.

- Leave the "None" option, in the "Else Play Action" menu

If you have PS CS6 or older:

Insert the Flatten Image command at the beginning of your action. Then edit the action so that it starts from the Background layer.

Kind regards

Panos Efstathiadis

[Benjamin Root]

Set up the action same as you are now, except use:

• Alt/Opt + [ or ] to move back/forward one layer
• Alt/Opt + Shift + [ or ] to add one layer back/forward to the active selection
• Ctrl/Cmd + [ or ] to move a layer down or up one

This will take any layer name referencing out of the equation, and replace it with "move active selection/layer by one"

[Stephen_A_Marsh]

In my frequency separation action, I used a layer set and an explicitly named layer, so it does not matter if the original is a flattened image or if it has one or more layers as this is creating a non destructive copy and is not dependent on the original layer names/structure.

Dropbox - Frequency Splitter v2B.atn.zip

[Stephen_A_Marsh]

I have just uploaded a new version of the action:

Dropbox - Frequency Splitter v3 Conditional.atn.zip

This version includes a conditional action step, so that you don’t have to think about matching the action to the document bit depth. Simply play the “Conditional Run” action and the appropriate action will be automatically played:

In each of the L+H Freq. actions, I have included two steps at the end to remove the layer set folder if you prefer to simply have the layers above the original image with no layer set. Simply “tick/check” the disabled playback icons to enable these two optional steps:

Apart from these minor changes, the actual frequency separation steps remain unchanged from the previous version.