Expert: LizaL - 12/8/2004

Question
I meant to say that I have Adobe Photoshop Elements 2.0...does that help the cause?

Most importantly I need to create thumbnails (all one size) and then apply the same border around them all.

That cant be so hard, right?

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Followup To
Question -
Adobe Photoshop 2.0 in Windows XP

I've got a border that each of my photos needs to fit into.  All my photos are in one folder.  Do I REALLY have to open each file image, cut and paste it into the border and save again?  

Good grief, I'll never be done.

Hope this question made sense.
Thanks!
Mercedes
Answer -
Hi Mercedes,

Wow, what a project -- it sounds like you must have a lot of pictures. I wish I had good news for you, but if you have Photoshop version 2.0, yes, you will have to do just what you said.

Version 2 doesn't have the Actions function, unfortunately. If you had a more recent version of Photoshop, you could set up a "pre-recorded" action that would do this function for you, automatically. But I don't think that was introduced until at least version 5.

I don't even own version 2 any more, so I just can't think of a quicker, more efficient way for you to handle this, much less test it out and make sure it would work.

I'm sorry! You really might want to consider an upgrade. Check out eBay and amazon.com to see what prices are like for an upgrade. If you're running XP, I'm assuming your machine could handle a decent Photoshop upgrade. I'd suggest upgrading your way up to Photoshop CS, where there are countless modifications and features.

Sorry --

Lisa

Answer
Thanks for posting back, Mercedes! Yes, that does make things a LOT simpler. Elements is a pretty good program, and although it's a bit limited in terms of things like batch processing and actions, you should be able to do a simple action for your framing project.

What I would do, and it sounds like you've done this, is make all the pictures the same size. Now you'll create an action that you can have run automatically for you.

You should have a palette called Actions. In this palette, click on the little page icon at the bottom of the palette window. This creates a new action. You'll be prompted to name the action, and then hit the Record button.

From here on out, Photoshop will record whatever keystrokes and fuctions you perform. So at this point, draw the border you want to use for your frame. Just do everything normally -- even go so far as to save the file, and open a new one. When you're finished, hit the stop button on the bottom of the actions palette (the little square on the left, at the bottom of the palette window).

Now you need to open a photo that you want to apply this action to. When you've done that, go back to the actions palette, and hit the play button (the little arrow at the bottom of the palette window). You'll see all the steps you just did on the first file, being performed automatically on this file.

Go to this link and watch the little movie I made:
http://little-works.com/all_experts/frame.mov

You'll see me create an action that will automatically place a border around the wreath picture. You can see me creating the border, and every action I perform is being recorded into the Actions palette. Watch closely at the end, because I go back and hit the "play" button and the action takes place.


Sorry to be so long in answering! I had a busy day today and didn't get back here in time to answer you sooner.

Hope this helps!

Lisa