Lumenzia: Recordable Actions

When using PS v25 or later with Lumenzia v11.6 or later, you may record your Lumenzia activity in a Photoshop action.

Key things to know about recording and playing back actions with Lumenzia:

  • When an action is played back, it works as if you interacted the same way with the plugin - but is adapted to the current state of the active image. It's basically like clicking the same button (and same modifier keys) at the time you playback the action. So if you shift-click curves for zone curves, playback will respond as if you just shift-clicked curves and give you the zone curves.
  • If there are popups in the middle of the action (such as to choose the radius for refining a selection), these choices are generally saved with the action as well. If recorded, they would be automatically used again. So in the previous example, if you selected narrow BlendIf for your zone curves, you would get that by default. However, you may also enable the icon next to the step in the actions panel for interactive playback. If supported, you should see the option to make different choices. So in our example, you could then get the option to confirm the narrow BlendIf or switch to wide zones. This may vary by action (depending on how I felt best to support) or based on factors in the current image (as different options may be applicable under different conditions). The general goal is to help you avoid many popup options during action playback, while still offering you an option to make choices if needed.
  • Some Lumenzia activity is not configured to support recording. This is by design to minimize time spent developing features which I do not expect will be useful for recording in an action (there is substantial development work and testing involved in many cases). If you do not see an action step created when recording and using Lumenzia, that feature is not supported. If you feel this is an important feature to record, please email me with details on why you feel this is useful for actions.

Lumenzia's "Action Recording Tools" (found under the flyout menu four bars icon at top-right / Utilities) includes support for special recording:

  • Turn on "Allow tool recording" if you wish to record steps such as using the brush, eraser, and clone stamp.
  • You may record tools using absolute or relative coordinates, depending on how you set the ruler at the time of recording. For example, if recording relative and you brush in the middle of an image and then playback on a larger image, it will still brush in the middle. However, if you record using absolute, then the tool will always be the same fixed distance from the top-left corner of the image (so playing back on a larger image would show the brushing further left on a larger image since it is no longer referencing the relative middle). The best choice is nearly always relative.

Separate from Lumenzia, Photoshop offers the following important tools via the Actions panel (Window / Actions ):

  • This panel is used to control all start/stop recording, playback, and organize actions (including import/export). There are icons at the bottom for critical functions, and a flyout menu at top-right of this panel with more options.
  • Playback starts from the item currently selected. This allows you to playback the action in its entirety, or starting from some midpoint. You can start playback by double-clicking the item or using the play icon at the bottom of the Actions panel. CAUTION: There is a bug in the PS beta where double-clicking a plugin action step will rename it to "Plugin Action" and it will stop working (and need to be re-recorded).
  • Any action with a check will be used during playback, the rest will be ignored. This can be helpful for debugging.
  • You may use flyout / button mode to see all actions as clickable buttons. This has a few benefits: it shows the actions in color (which is handy for organization), you can see more options at once, and you can use the actions panel like a plugin.
  • To change the name, function key, or color of an existing action: either double-click the blank space right of the action name or select it and choose "action options" from the flyout menu. Note: this only applies for the action itself, not the steps within it (make sure you have the correct target selected).
  • If you need to do something in the middle of an action (such as brush manually on a layer mask), you can "insert stop" via the flyout menu. If you may only sometimes need to do something, you may check the "allow continue" option when inserting the stop. This will cause the prompt to include a choice whether to continue running the action or stop for you to do something.
  • Action items with the icon just right of the checkmark active indicate a request to work interactively. So if you used Gaussian blur, you'd see a prompt when using it that allows you to change the blur radius. As noted above, Lumenzia will respond this interactive setting in a few limited cases (such as feathering options when creating a mask).
  • At the top-right of the Actions panel is a flyout menu (four bars icon). Click it to see several helpful options.