Adobe Illustrator CS4 - Manual (Page 444)

437 USING ADOBE ILLUSTRATOR CS4
Automating tasks
2 Do one of the following:
• (Illustrator) To play a set of actions, select the set name, and click the Play button in the Actions panel, or choose
Play from the panel menu.
• To play an entire single action, select the action name, and click the Play button in the Actions panel, or choose Play
from the panel menu.
• If you assigned a key combination to the action, press that combination to play the action automatically.
• To play only a part of an action, select the command from which you want to start playing, and click the Play button
in the Actions panel, or choose Play from the panel menu.
• To play a single command, select the command, and then Ctrl-click (Windows) or Command-click (Mac OS) the
Play button in the Actions panel. You can also press Ctrl (Windows) or Command (Mac OS), and double-click the
command.
In Photoshop, to undo an action, take a snapshot in the History panel before you play an action, and then select the
snapshot to undo the action.
Record an action
When you create a new action, the commands and tools you use are added to the action until you stop recording.
To guard against mistakes, work in a copy: at the beginning of the action before applying other commands, record the
File > Save A Copy command (Illustrator) or record the File > Save As command and select As A Copy (Photoshop).
Alternatively, in Photoshop you can click the New Snapshot button on the History panel to make a snapshot of the image
before recording the action.
1 Open a file.
2 In the Actions panel, click the Create New Action button , or choose New Action from the Actions panel menu.
3 Enter an action name, select an action set, and set additional options:
Function Key Assigns a keyboard shortcut to the action. You can choose any combination of a function key, the Ctrl
key (Windows) or Command key (Mac OS), and the Shift key (for example, Ctrl+Shift+F3), with these exceptions: In
Windows, you cannot use the F1 key, nor can you use F4 or F6 with the Ctrl key.
Note: If you assign an action the same shortcut that is used for a command, the shortcut will apply the action rather than
the command.
Color Assigns a color for display in Button mode.
4 Click Begin Recording. The Begin Recording button in the Actions panel turns red .
Important: When recording the Save As command, do not change the filename. If you enter a new filename, that new
name is recorded and used each time you run the action. Before saving, if you navigate to a different folder, you can
specify a different location without having to specify a filename.
5 Perform the operations and commands you want to record.
Not all tasks in actions can be recorded directly; however, you can insert most nonrecordable tasks using commands
in the Actions panel menu.
6 To stop recording, either click the Stop Playing/Recording button, or choose Stop Recording from the Actions
panel menu. (In Photoshop, you can also press the Esc key.)
To resume recording in the same action, choose Start Recording from the Actions panel menu.