Make your very first action!

Welcome to actions

There’s a great deal of art and science to making actions, and the more you make, the better you’ll get. I can’t possibly teach you all the tricks in one article.

I’m here to help you make your very first action. If you’re new to Photoshop, or have just upgraded from Elements to Photoshop, or have simply never understood the Actions Panel, this will set you on your way.

For the subject of this tutorial I’ve chosen Saving for Facebook. Almost everybody posts photos on Facebook from time to time, either for personal or professional purposes, so I hope this will be doubly helpful. Together, we’ll make an action that resizes, sharpens and saves your photo, ready for uploading.

(These steps will work in all versions of Photoshop. Sorry, Elements users, this one isn’t for you. You can run actions, but you can’t make ’em.)

Are you ready?

Let's do this! Click here to proceed to the step-by-step instructions