Creating Photoshop Actions

This post along with other Blurb book tips and tutorials can be found in the “Want to Make a Blurb Book?” link.

So I’ve showed you how to create your own album templates and how to put a picture across the gutter of a page, but after you’ve created your spreads you’ll need to crop them into two separate pages. This is because for online albums like Blurb you need to upload each page separately. The quickest, easiest way to turn your spreads into two different pages is to create some Photoshop actions. Actions are very simple to make and use plus they can save you tons of time.

 

1.) First open up one of your spreads. Then open the actions palette (Widow>Actions).

 

2.) Second, make a new action by clicking on the button that looks like a Post-It note (second from the right). In the window that pops up give the action a name and designate a function key. The function key will serve as a shortcut to playing your action in the future. For this example I’m naming the action “Left Page Crop.” Then click Record.

 

3.) Now you just do whatever you want to be recorded as your action. To a spread into two pages I created two different actions. For the first action, used to create the left page, I just selected the crop tool from the tool palette and cropped the spread to be just the left page of the spread. Remember the very center guide designates the page separation so this is where you should crop it to.

 

4.) To finish the action press the stop button (the square button in the bottom left). You should have only the left side page showing. Now save the page as the page number not the original file name using Save As (Shift+Ctrl+S). Save the page as a jpeg at the highest quality possible.

 

5.) Next, you need to create a second action to make the right side page. Repeat steps 2 & 3 naming the action “Right Page Crop.” While recording this action you need to do one more step. In the history palette (Widow>History) click on the previous step (in the picture below this is Open), undoing the left side crop. Then re-crop the spread to be the right page.

 

6.) Finish off the right side page by stopping the action and saving the file as the page number. And your finished!

 

You should have two .jpeg files now one for each page.

 

To use these actions now all you need to do is:

1. Open the next layout you’ve created
2. Hit the function key for the Left Page Crop
3. Save the left page to a new name
4. Hit the Right Page Crop function key
5. Save the right page

Once you get a rhythm going you’ll fly through all those spreads!

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Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)

• My Mother’s Rose: Photoshop Addiction, Part II
• Monday’s Tip – Special Effect Plug-ins
• Useful Photoshop Actions For Photo Enhancements