Anyone who’s been following my photo-blog realizes that it’s been as silent as this blog had been since Ramadan of last year. What you may not realize is that I have been snapping pictures relentlessly, saving and intending to upload. But I never got around to it because, well, I was lazy. I got a little tired of processing my photos in PhotoShop and Picasa, because repetitive tasks bore the life out right out of me.
But last month, I realized I’d better use those photos I took, or my memories will be lost forever. Oh, the horror. For the last month, I’ve been sorting through the pics, trying to decide which ones I really want to upload. I don’t even know how many I selected, but I know that it’s a lot. Oh, wait, I just checked, and see that I’ve got 221 + 219 vacation pictures. Now, I know why I was so terrified of beginning the editing process.
I got to thinking, “wouldn’t it be nice if we could automate the edit, resize, and watermark process?” I know that Picasa does allow for Batch Edits, but you’re on your own with resizing and watermarking. Then, I got to remembering seeing something about Actions, a PhotoShop concept I was too intimidated to look into. Well, put four hundred and eighty photos on one side of a scale, and intimidation for PhotoShop on the the other side, and you can guess which scared me more. So, I fired up Google in search of the easiest explanation and how-to guide for PhotoShop Actions.
What are Actions? They’re a recording of the steps you take to edit a file. So, if you’ve got a bunch of steps that you automatically do over and over again, those steps are the perfect candidates for being saved as an Action Set. I found a simple tutorial for the Watermark Action on DPChallenge that is worth looking into, if you’re into processing your photos with PhotoShop. Do you know how long it took to edit half my pictures? Just a couple of interrupted-with-other-activity hours. My pictures finally get a chance to be eternally saved on the great wide web.
If anyone has any other processing actions worth knowing about, please let me know about them. I think I can really get into this whole action thing!
Digital Niqabi 