3.13. Creating Custom Actions

Photoshop provides a ridiculous number of shortcuts. To be perfectly honest, it provides more shortcuts than you'll ever need. For example, you may never meet anyone who regularly links layers by Ctrl+Shift+Alt-right-clicking (+Shift+Option+Control-clicking) on elements in the image window. But it is possible. And by choosing Edit Keyboard Shortcuts, Photoshop gives you the unprecedented ability to assign your own keyboard shortcuts to such important but hitherto-shortcut-challenged commands as Unsharp Mask, Variations, and Color Range.

But sometimes a simple keyboard shortcut isn't enough. You may find yourself performing certain sequences of commands in the same order each time. Maybe you have a series of very similar images shot with a digital camera, and they all need the same saturation adjustment via Hue/Saturation, the same gamma tweak via Levels, and the same sharpening via Unsharp Mask. Even hitting three shortcuts in a row for each image in a large group can get pretty tiresome.