Special Edition Using Adobe Creative Suite 2

Palettes provide ways to manipulate tools and objects in your documents. Here we take a look at the functions of various palettes in Photoshop CS2. You may not work with all the palettes when you first start using Photoshop, but given time you are exposed to everything.

The Actions Palette

In the Actions palette, you can record and play back actions, which, like macros, perform automated tasks in the program (see Figure 4.22). Actions are commands completed in Photoshop that have been recorded to be played back repeatedly on many images to save you time and energy. The default actions that are loaded in Photoshop CS2 modify only Photoshop menus; however, you can click the palette menu to choose Sample Actions. Experiment with these sample actions in your images and layers. There are libraries of actions you can load into the palette. Some of the different types of actions that ship with Photoshop are Image Effects, Text Effects, Production Actions, and Texture Actions. For more information on using actions, refer to Chapter 10, "Creating a Power Workflow in Photoshop."

The Animation Palette

Photoshop CS2 includes an Animation palette, formerly available only in ImageReady (see Figure 4.23). Using layers of your document, you can take frame snapshots and simulate movement across the frames. Animate a text layer sliding across the image using the Tweens Animation button, for example. Send your document over to ImageReady where you can export your animation into a Flash movie (.swf).