> PHOTOSHOP USER>^ MARCH 2020[ 56 ]
Preset drop-down menu in the Properties panel. For creat-
ing other types of presets, look for options to save presets
in drop-down menus, flyout menus, and buttons in panels
and dialogs.BUILT-IN AUTOMATION
Photoshop has some automated commands that are avail-
able from the File menu under Automate and Scripts. The
advantage of these commands is that they’re already built
and can be run as is. The options under Automate include
the following:
Crop and Straighten Photos: After scanning in or photo-
graphing multiple photos in one document, use this com-
mand to automatically straighten and separate the photos
into individual documents.
Contact Sheet II: Generate contact sheets from individual
files, a folder, or selected files using settings such as how
many columns and rows of thumbnails you want. (Note:
Bridge has an Output module that offers even more control
with the option to drag-and-drop images into a layout, and
a full preview.)
Conditional Mode Change: Designed to be part of an
action, this dialog lets you add an if/then approach; forconsidered presets, you could easily add character and para-
graph styles into the mix.) Creating and using presets can
be a valuable timesaver, because they do the work for you.
It’s also important to remember that, in many cases, a
preset is just a starting point. In other words, you don’t have
to click on a preset and live with the results; you can always
tweak the settings. Remember the starter action discussed
earlier that added two adjustment layers? The same princi-
ple applies to adjustment layer presets: Create presets that
are good starting points and you can tweak the settings on
an image-by-image basis. It’s still faster compared to the
alternative of start-
ing from scratch.
In this example,
after I adjusted the
Curves adjustment
layer, I clicked on
the flyout menu at
the top right of the
panel, and selected
Save Curves Preset.
I gave it a name
and c licked Save.
This custom preset
now appears in the