Fixing ‘flattened layer’ Photoshop Actions
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I love Photoshop Actions. I use them all the time, mainly to speed up my workflow and take care of all those mundane mouse clicks you need to go through in order to achieve one specific task. The web is a great resource for freebies to download or you can buy Signature Action Sets from various Portrait and Wedding Photographers around the world…some are great, some not so much.
However, one of the things that really gets up my nose is how a lot of these Action Sets leave you with a flattened file. Not ideal if, like me, you want total control of the strength of effect and the ability to change your mind easily if you don’t like the effect. Maybe some of the action steps need to work on flattened files or perhaps it’s because the creator doesn’t want you to see their ’secrets’. Either way its a little annoying running an action and having it flatten your document. So, I thought I would post a quick and dirty tutorial to give you back a little control.
I should also say that I use a Mac so unfortunately I don’t know the equivalent key commands on a PC. Anyway, to the tutorial…
There’s one thing we need to before we start. Download and install these actions I’ve made for the tutorial. The ‘Action Helper Set’ contains only two actions, one that contains a ‘Duplicate Merged Image’ command and one that contains a ‘Flatten, Copy, Paste & Close’ command. We’ll only use this set as the copy source for the steps we need to insert into other actions. Having these in your actions palette just saves time really.
Open the action you want to stop flattening images (in this case a LAB B&W action) by clicking on the triangle next to the action name and repeat for the two ‘Helper’ actions.
(Click on thumbnails to see larger versions)
In the ’Duplicate Image’ action, highlight ‘Duplicate first document’ step. You must select the step within the action and not the action itself or this won’t work. Holding ‘ALT’ on a Mac (sorry, I’m not sure about PC) copy the ‘Duplicate Image’ step to the beginning of the action you want to fix. Make sure you do copy the step as opposed to just moving it. By copying you’ll be able to re-use the Helper Set steps on other actions.
Go back to the ‘Helper Set’ and highlight all the steps in the ‘Copy, Paste & Close’ action and holding ‘ALT’ copy all the steps in the action to the end of the offending action.
Play your action and assuming everything has gone according to plan your action should run on a duplicate image before copying the flattened image back into your working file on a separate layer.
If your action happens to finish on a ‘Stop command’ allowing you to make adjustments just press play on the action to continue with your newly added ‘flatten, copy, paste and close’ steps. For even more control you might try to insert your own Stop Command’s or even uncheck the flattening steps in the original action. However, please be aware that a lot of these actions will more than likely require the flattening step to run properly and by doing this you may break the action….I just find this a safer work around.
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