How to save time with Illustrator & Photoshop Actions Panel

Recently, on Twitter my friend George Coghill ask me if it was possible to scale up/down a selected object in Adobe Illustrator using a keyboard shortcuts. Unfortunately there is no such keyboard shortcuts to do that. But… this could be done using the Action panel. An action is a series of tasks that you play back on a single file or a batch of files (menu commands, panel options, tool actions, and so on). The power of Actions is not just the fact that you can record single or multiple steps and/or command to easily play them back when you need it, it’s also in the fact that you can assign a keyboard shortcut to it (Function Key with or without Shift and Cmd/Ctr ). That way you can play them from the keyboard. You can also use it to assign a keyboard shortcut to a command not available among the list available with the Keyboard Shortcuts editor in the application. You can read George blog post on the GoMediaZine web site about how to record and assign a key to easily scale up or down objects in Illustrator. So next time you find yourself frequently repeating the same steps or series of command, ask yourself: Can I recorded that into Action and assign a keyboard shortcuts? The Action Panel is also in Adobe Photoshop.

You can find more informations about the Action panel on their respective web help page for Illustrator or Photoshop.

You can find and downlaod pre-made actions at the Adobe Exchange web site.

You can follow George Coghill and GoMedia on twitter.

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