3:24 PM 4/25/2007

I have a quick complaint about Photoshop. Maybe I just need to dig out the manual, but I have found that figuring it out yourself can be a more rewarding exercise sometimes.

As with many programs, PS allows you to record, edit and play back Macros. Don't want to memorize the steps to do something you do frequently, but you still want to execute it precisely every time? Store the sequence as a macro. PS calls them "Actions". One of the preset actions is called "Sepia Toning". You can guess what that does. I recorded a handy one to rotate a picture left 90 degrees, close and then save. I make sure to take all my sideways photos with the trigger end of the camera pointing up, and that action puts it back in the desired orientation. I encountered a problem: I take pictures both ways, so I can't simply rotate every picture. It would be nice to select the images I want and have them all rotated. That action combined with the "Batch" command offers me this power. I knew about all these pieces, and one day I put them together: I selected a bunch of sideways photos that needed to be rotated, I brought up the Batch dialog, set all the controls and let her rip.

It didn't quite work.

Each picture opened and rotated, then the Save As dialog box popped up, waiting for me to click OK. Well, I don't want to click OK. I feel that by running the action in batch mode, I have explicitly OK'd every single image. That's what batch mode means. What else could it possibly be for. I can already open several files at once, rotate each one with a function key I programmed, then confront the Save As dialog when I close the file. I don't need any special mode to do that. I'm perfectly capable of operating in manual mode.

This is where we get to the problem of control semantics in human-computer interfaces. Follow along with me here - you'll love it: In Batch, you specify the action to be performed, the source of the files (selected items in the file browser is an option), some opening options that don't affect me, and then the destination. I want to overwrite the files in place. "No Action" is an option, "Save and Close" is an option, and "Folder" is an option. "Folder" would suck - I want to put the modified file back where it was. The other two aren't so hot, but one of them has to be right. "Save and Close" sounds like the way to go - except that my recorded macro both saves and closes. So, I'm left with "No Action". The Batch processor doesn't need to bother because my little action script does the deed. And, that didn't work. Every time, I had to click OK.

Oh, here we go - I though that I made this work once before the great disk crash of 2005, but I never figured out how I did it: Batch offers to save and close, so don't include those in the action script. At first I thought it would do the same thing, so I was reluctant to try it. Eventually I convinced myself that there were no other choices left.

But, even now that I made it work, my complaint is still valid: This expensive, carefully crafted piece of software did nothing to assure me that one way of saving would wait for my input while another way would not. I wouldn't know to make the distinction, and nothing visible marks the difference. They are both only indicated as "save and close". While we're being explicit about what steps go into an action, I expect to have to supply my own save and close, but the only version available for me to supply is the interactive one. I want to "interact" with the computer as infrequently as I can get away with. I think of my computer as some sort of flying monkey that runs off to do my bidding in cyberspace. Any extra interaction robs precious time I could use for something else. (yes, I would probably just use the time for watching television, but that's not the point!)

Do you think the manual would have been any help here?

last updated 1 year ago #