Actions won't record in photoshop CC 2017

[brendajflay]

We have 3 Windows terminals in our processing office, all using windows 10 pro vsn 1703 and running photoshop CC 2017 r1.1 and this problem presents on multiple terminals.  We want to record a simple action where a CR2 file is opened, the cropping removed and the file saved to a subfolder of the containing folder.  So the set is created and then the action under that. Click on the record button and open the file... at this stage, no further lines appear under the default - action 1 ... so click the crop tool, clear the crop, save the file (the record button is still showing red... recording) and then click done, at which point the camera raw 9.12 window disappears and so does the actions pallet.  So click on window and then actions and when the actions pallet reappears, the red dot indicates that it is still recording but there have been no actions recorded; nothing beside the default name - action 1.  Any suggestions?

[c.pfaffenbichler]

Not all plugins are ready for Actions or Scripts, apparently ACR is such a one.

But one can »Clear Crop« for multiple images in ACR itself by selecting them all and invoking the command.

Or one could use Bridge to »Clear Settings«, though that would not be useful if there are other custom settings one needs to maintain.

Have you done a Forum Search yet?

[JJMack]

All you do in Photoshop is not recordable in actions only some things are.  It has been that way from day one when Action support was added to Photoshop. 

Tools that use brush stokes were never recordable.  Later on Adobe added tool recording.  However that feature is not really useful or implemented well, Brush settings are not recorded and strokes depend on documents size resolutions and content. All document are not the same so recorded stroke  are not globally useful. In fact if you install Adobe ScriptListener plug-in Adobe will disable tool recording. I install Scriptlistener and do not care the I can not record tool usage IMO it is nor really useful.

ACR is quite special.  In Some cases it works completely automatically with out its UI but you use it usually in an interactive way for a particular image.  And if what you do for that image is applicable to other images you sync or assign the ACR setting you just made to those other images.  If you open those image in a batch process ACR will Automatically process those image with those settings adjustments etc in a non interactive way.   For you associated those setting to those images.  Image that you did not assign ACR setting opened by that batch Process will also be open via ACR in an Automated way using the camera RAW defaults you or Adobe has set for your different cameras. ACR also acts as an automated process when you use it as smart Filter it reapplies the setting recorded for the smart filter when they need to be reapplied because you made some other adjustment to the smart object layer.

If your main concern is  cropping images there are many way you can crop in actions.  Cropping is not limited to ACR.