Lessons

Lesson Info

Conditional Actions

The next anything can't believe how fast today is going to really want to get to these last three things are conditional actions and these are a little bit more complicated that's why saved until kind of last the most complicated comes very last, which is three d but here we are in we've got two different sizes of images up or two different aspect rations ok, we've got a close that we got a portrait orientation and we've got a landscape orientation what if I wanted to add, what if I wanted to create an action that as a watermark to these two images but I want let's say the landscape orientation watermark to maybe appears the bottom right corner and I want the vertical watermark who to appear maybe down at the bottom? How in the heck can I do that? Well, in cc we got conditional actions which allows you to record two different actions or however many you want and when you insert the conditional you can it's basically and if then else statement if you need you guys or programmers out the...

re, you'll understand this you're creating an if then else situation, so let's go ahead and create an action two separate actions that would work for these files case we're going to create one watermark for the portrait aspect ratio and then we're going to create another action toe watermark a landscape orientation photo, then we're going to create a third action that's the conditional in all that action is going to be saying, hey, phone shop, if images and you've got a whole pop down list of items that you can choose from one of them is if document is landscape, then then choose this action in a pop down menu else, what do you do if it's not landscape, choose this action? So the trick is to record the individual actions first, place them in a single set in the actions panel off over the create the conditional, and also is it in the same city? And as long as all those items are in the same set, that conditional can choose among the actions in that set to meet the criteria that you set with the conditional you're like, oh, ok, it sounds way harder than it is, and when she did a couple of times, it will become easier. So here we've got open an image, I'm gonna go ahead and press t to grab the text tool, and we're goingto do some copyright information so option g or all g, I think there's a community it's too small for me to see, so let's go way up in point size, I think it is option g. It is option g for simple there it is I see it now okay we'll make you bigger there it isthe assault it was so small I didn't look like it was the right keyboard shortcut so I'm using to keep or a shortcut we'll bonus your feet to increase text size so it is shift command greater than shift control greater than on a pc shift command less than our shift control less than on the pc goes down in point size so most often times I have no clue what point size I'm gonna end up using for what? So I just type it and then I highlight everything and use those keyboard shortcuts so shift command greater than to make it bigger you do have to highlight it or shift command or control less than to make it smaller ok so now it's type in lisa snyder mouse away from the text I'm typing so I can drag it back onto the photo arguably easier see and then we'll put photo lisa dot com underneath it now my text is running into each other so I'm gonna press command a to highlight all of it grabbed my character panel and I'm just going to change the leading the leading this one backto auto and I'll space it out a little bit and if I wanted to I could change that with the keyboard shortcut as well you can change leading if both lines air or the line that you want to effect is highlighted by pressing command option and for control off on a pc and tapping your down arrow key to increase letting like we're doing here or you're up arrow to decrease, letting that's how you can make type crashing each other, actually, so we've got that all set, so now I'm gonna change my phone, everything's highlighted so I can come up here to the options bar and I'm a changes to a bold when I do that, it becomes a little too whites were going to use their keyboard shortcut to go down and font size again. That's why I love doing this stuff visually it's so easy and then for this one let's say that I'd like it to be centered, so I'm gonna go ahead and use the centered alignment and just kind of roughly position it, and now I'm finished editing the text really? I could go ahead and change the blend mode if I want here change capacity to make it more like a water mark so you could just drop the opacity or what I usually do is change the blend mode to something like soft light, and that makes it a little bit see through, but it's still there, and you can experiment with the different blend mode. To see which one will work best for you overlay oftentimes can be quite nice depending upon the color that your text was in the first place if we double click to activate the type player and click the little color swatch either in the options bar or in the character panel when we get the color picker so we could make that pure white which is going to make that blend mode do a little bit of a better job for a water marking purpose for us so there's what soft light looks like I usually go for soft light so this could just as easily be a logo okay so now that I've done all that and this is a great way to experiment with exactly the way that you want your watermark to look then you could copy and paste it okay but over here in my notes I've made a note of exactly what size to make everything so that when we get ready to record our action you don't have to play around like that but this is gives you an idea of how you can experiment to make your watermark ok somebody go ahead in delete that layer now since I know what I'm going to do let's go ahead and open the actions panel by choosing window actions and I'm going to expand it a little bit and clean up some of my other actions see since I sink my settings earlier these actions showed up in this copy of photo shop that meat and then do that at home weeks ago, but I'm going to go ahead and delete this whole section this whole set, so we start over from scratch together, okay, so first, I'm going to make a new folder into which all these actions were going to go, so create new set, I'm gonna name it water marks. Now we're ready to record the action. So it's pressed the record button are actually the new action button right here. It's a new action, and we're gonna call this one portrait watermark and click ok, so now, at this point, flutter shops gonna be recording all of my keystrokes. So what we're going to first, we're going to press tito, activate the text tool. Even if it's already active right now, you cannot always be assured that when you're ready to run this action, that the type tools active so you have to account for every possibility. So press tito, activate the time. Toast that's captured in the action. Okay, now we can come over here. And if we know ahead of time what all of our font settings are, we can go ahead and set them up right now, and even if the fire is already active in the menu you need to click it and choose it again because you have no idea what font you may have set between then and when you're going to run this action so and come over here and choose bold and let's put in the size, which is one hundred thirty six set the alignment to center set the color say we're doing everything because we have no idea what these settings they're going to be when we're ready to run this action now we're ready tio click and start typing so command g was our was adoption g it was community and we're gonna type lisa snyder in our command you didn't come up there so we're gonna do it again here we go comand see that game in two thousand thirteen lisa snyder come over here and click to come down to the next layer type you're uriel if you want tio now let's press command a to highlight everything and maybe we're going to make that blend mood change from the layer poppet many blame oh poppet many rather so we can choose either overlay or soft light and because this action is going to run so fast even if you change your mind like right here as totally fine because it's going to go so fast that it all just happened like that so now all we need to do is position in on top of our photo well, I need to activate all of these layers in order to use photo shops built in alignment tools but I don't want to click on any of these layers because the action of clicking on either of these two layers is going to capture that layer name in the action which means that every time I run this action it's going toe give me an error if it doesn't encounter layer names exactly like this so what you want to do when you're working with layers in actions is use keyboard shortcuts to activate players or you could just use the select menu so we can choose select all layers in my book photo shops sisi the missing manual in the previous versions I have ah hole one solid page of keyboard shortcuts just for activating and deactivating layers for use with actions but for this one to select all it's real easy so we're going to select all layers now we foundem all active now we compress viva activate vito activate the move tool and now we've got all of photo shots alignment tools up here so if we want this watermark to be at the bottom we can click a line to bottom images and then we can use the move tool after we just clicked back on the type player to screw that up just a little bit so it's not on the bottom ege now we're basically finished with that action so we can click the stop button. Ok? So now let's, go ahead and delete that type player and let's play that action on this file and make sure that it works so here's my a portrait watermark and will click play and it works. Yeah, you never know what actions man great, so that one is all set and ready to give so now let's do the same thing on the landscape version. So again, we're going to start by making a new the action. We're still in the same water, mark said, so we're gonna call this one landscape watermark and click record do every single thing in case the tools and the options have been changed. Okay, so pressed, he grabbed the type tool. Come over here to your documents, go ahead and type in everything, he says. Snyder photo lisa dot com now we can select all come up here to our font menu make sure that we choose the fun even if it's already chosen because you have no idea what you may have changed this too between now and then this time we're going to set the alignment to the right and we're going to click our color swatch and again we're going to make sure that we've got, white said is our color now we can if you go straight to the blend mode menu to make the change there, you don't have tio commit the text or tell photoshopped you're finished typing the text, but if you don't go straight over there and change the blend mode, this text can still stay in a in a state of being edited which can mess you up so you could just go ahead and include the action of committing the text so now let's grab the move tool and let's scoot it over here we go and now let's go ahead and change its blend mode to what we say overlay or soft line might work better for this one, but anyway you guys get the point okay, now that she's your keyboard shortcut to activate the layers and useful to shops alignment tools so we make sure we get this in the bottom right corner so we're going to choose select all layers ok? You don't want to click on the layer names because photo shot will capture the layer names in the action and it will not run properly now with the move still active click to activate it we're going toe click the third button here a line bottom edges and then executed all the way over to the right we're going to click a line right edges now we can click on just the type player because why is it ok to click the type player because the whole action is based on creating this layer so you know that that layer is always going to be there and it's always going to be named the same thing so that's why it's ok to click on the type player but not on the other layers you have no clue how many layers any of these images we're gonna have could have three layers could have ten layers right? So that's why using the keyboard shortcut to activate those air the layers is crucial in this kind of an action so now that we've got it positioned let's just use the up arrow keys to bring it up from the bottom a little bit and use a left a rookie to bring it away from that ride edge so you're using the alignment tools just to get it in the right vicinity and then you're just tweaking it a little bit with your arrow key so now we're finished with that action so let's click stop plus delete our type player and let's see mount a little bit and let's test our action you always want to test him before you set up your conditional because why bother right it's not gonna work so it was click on landscape watermark click play and there we go now here's the conditional within the same set we're going to create another new action and I call this one lar mart conditional record insert conditional that's where the magic is and this is all there is to it's very, very simple when she get those other when she get every eventuality prepared for when she prepare for it, then you can choose among them here in this conditional so if current so that's your if statement look at all these choices now, there's not everything you would ever wish for in there, but a lot of what you would wish for is in there. Okay, I wish there was a if pixels are transparent or if layer contains transparent pixels because I use conditional actions on the trim command to trim down your images close cropped them you can see over here, I'll show you in a second and my missing manual actions because I do all the screen shots myself is I have to choose between two actions trim, trim, white trim, transparent side to actions for that, but unfortunately, there's no condition in here that lets me use a conditional action for it. But I expect that this list will expand, you know, in subsequent virgins. Ok, so if document is landscape great that's really all we need then play landscape watermark else so here's your else play portrait watermark that's absolutely it so don't let it throw you amazing in it don't let it throw you if you don't see just the right conditional in this pop up list for example there's no portrait in there so it might lead you to think well crap I can't do that man as long as there's the opposite of the condition landscape well then you can use your else statement for the other eventuality which is porcher even though portrait isn't in this list so it does take some thinking if you have any experience in programming this will be a no brainer because it is just a flat out if then l statement if landscape is document play landscape watermark action if it's not then play this other thing which is how you account for portrait aspect ratio and that's it you say ok and you stop and now for the real power because you would not do that just for a couple of images right? Who would go through all that work where the power comes in is right here when you go to file automate batch so let's say you've got a folder full of five hundred images that you need water march our union twenty images that you need water mart that's how you do it you set up your condition als you set up your individual actions, set up your conditional go to file automate to his badge and here you could say play what set watermarks which action watermark conditional and that one action depending upon the aspect ratio the photos that you open will pick the right action to run you'll notice when we were recording the actions we didn't put in any kind of save command that's because it's that's better to do that here in the batch dialog box so for destination I could say saving close or I could specify another folder and I could give it new naming if I wanted to so that's why I don't typically put my safe commands in action I save the saving information or command rather for the batch dialog box so that's a really, really powerful thing so that's conditional actions in I mean just record in action for each eventuality and then you record the conditional so I'm not going to walk through the individual actions but let's do the conditional more more time so you know where that is so we've got our actions panel here we've created a set that's very important if the conditional is not in the same set as the individual actions, it will not work so it has to be in the same set and that's just good actions panel organization anyway, so we've got our individual winds now we're going to create a new action and I find it for me it's helpful to put the word conditional in there because that way I know which wanted to use in the batch processing dialog box else how do you know so we'll call this watermark conditional clicked record go right up to the actions panel fly out in you and choose insert conditional that's all you have to do in this action nothing else so if document is choose your condition then play landscape if it's not landscape play the portrait watermark say ok and click stop now when you go to file automate batch choose what set your actions were in all of them and from the action when you choose your conditional and then set up these other settings as you need to for the saving and where those processed files were going to go huge huge huge time saver and of course there's a bazillion different eventualities aside from water marking but that's the seine easy one to show you on the difference between you know only escaping a portrait image so why don't I show you some three d things? And then we can stop for questions if that's okay all right conditional actions had scary but fun powerful and we're getting standing ovations over here not only the best but in the in the chat rooms as well get good good okay so I shall actually one more quick thing for we get a three d which say the new exchange panel and there's nothing that folder it's just my reminder to show you the new exchange panel so you know, have you guys ever used the adobe studio exchange website it's a community thing? They renamed it to photo shop exchange and none in the too distant past. But anyway it was a place for people who had created custom brushes custom grady it's custom actions and all other kinds of things like that to upload them to the internet so that other people could download them either free or for a minimal amount of money. Well, you used to have to go through your web browser teo the studio exchange or photoshopped exchange site well now it's a panel inside photo shop which is really handy and I'm pretty sure it's a panel inside of all the big gaps like in design and illustrator I think but how you access it is you need an internet connection for it to work, so go to the window menu, choose extensions adobe exchange and that's it it's the whole website here in the panel. So if you like either sharing your own presets like this and this is sharing them not just for you to access on another machine but I mean to the planet then this is an easier way to both upload them and download and install them. So for example, I go to adobe exchange here and I just want to click free and I can see what's free oh look at all these things that I can download. Russell brown, which is the chief of angeles for adobe systems, makes all kinds of fun things. So all you have to do is double click these things. Info. Chappelle installed them in the appropriate folder, just like that. So that's, a really neat thing. That's new with photo shop in the creative cloud.