Intro

Blogging, as we all know is much more than writing an article. In most posts, you need to take screen captures, edit, copy, paste, format, etc.. Basically, there is much more to it than meets the eye. Any decent article will take at least an hour to write and may take several. Here I am going to show you how to set up a simple action that can streamline your blogging by creating the main post image or “title image” for you.

Often times a blog will use the same exact style for each and every title image, or something relatively similar. This is a guide on how you can create an action to do this for you dynamically. You can also find a link to download this action, at the end of this post.

Step 1

Open up your image of any size. Just make sure it’s the size that you’d like your blog title images to appear. Ours is 550px by 350px.

Step 2

In your Action Pane, click the folder icon. This will prompt you for a name, which will be for your new Action Set. Name this “Blog Actions”, as this is where you can store all of the actions that you will regularly use on your blog.

Step 3

Click the folded page icon in your Actions Pane, which will prompt you for a name for your new action. You can also assign an action a function key, which will simply make it easier to access this action in the future. Once you press record, your every completed move is being logged by your action. You can hit the stop button at any time to stop recording. Just remember to press record again or you will end up with a half completed action and have to repeat your steps all over again.

Step 4

Once you’ve hit record, create a new layer and draw a rectangular marquee across the lower-middle of your layer. Fill this with black(#000000) and lower the opacity to somewhere between 70-80%.

Step 5

Grab your Type Tool with a relatively large and bold Slab Serif or Sans Serif font, and create your main title. Rename this layer “Title”.

Step 6

Press the Stop button in your actions pane and click the actions menu button in the upper right hand corner. Select Insert Stop… This will insert a stopping point in your action to give you or anyone else a chance to change something. In this case, it would be the actual text of the title font you just got done inserting. For things of this nature, where a change must be made by the user to successfully complete the rest of the action, make sure that the Allow Continue radio button is not checked and give a description of what the user needs to do before pressing play again.

Step 7

Press the Record button in your Actions Pane to resume your action. Right click your type layer and go to Blending Options. Change your Blend Mode to Soft Light.

Step 8

Click on Inner Shadow and give it a small sharp shadow, like the settings shown below.

Step 9

Depending on your background image, you may need a little brighter type for your title. If so, just duplicate the layer you just made. Change it’s Blend Mode to Normal and give it an Opacity of 50%.

As you can see, you have a nice little pressed lettering look for your title. Now we can move on to the next step.

Step 10

Create a new type layer. This time with a much smaller bold type. Something easy to read like a basic sans serif font. Lower the opacity on this layer to around 80%.

Step 11

Stop your action once again, and create another stop point to allow you, or someone else to edit the small description text.

Step 12

You can again hit record if there are other things would like to do with your action, but for this guide our action is completed. Now any user can easily create a title image from just a single graphic. The action will do the rest of the work for them. Remember that for any action you create for you or yourself to not merge layer or flatten your image. Unless of course you don’t want to be able to change anything after the action is played.

Here is what our action panel looks like at this point:

Here is our completed title image:

Grab This Action

The possibilities for improving your workflow with actions are abundant. We have made this particular action available for download if you’d like to use it in your own projects.

About the Author

AJ Troxell is a graphic designer and web developer. He owns and operates Phire Design and the Phire Design blog with his partner and wife, Heather.

Visit Website   Follow on Twitter