The Photoshop Productivity Series: Automating Photoshop

Introduction: Automate What You Can

Photoshop and Bridge offer many automation features, including actions, built-in functions, scripts, and some not-so-obvious automations. But before we go too far, I want to say one thing about automation. Many people I talk to give this reason for not using automations: “I can’t get it to do the whole operation for me.”

I think that’s the wrong approach. To me, automation is anything that makes my job easier and takes less time. Even if an automation cannot complete an entire task from A to Z, if I can get from A to K faster and do the rest myself, that’s still a great thing. I like to always remember the phrase “compared to the alternative”—as in, “this automation can’t do the whole operation for me, but ...