User's Manual

735
ADOBE PHOTOSHOP CS2
User Guide
About conditionals (ImageReady)
A conditional is a statement of a situation that must be met before the next step of an action can take place. You set
both the condition and the steps to take if the condition is met. Conditionals are extremely useful in limiting the
range of items an action will work on. For instance, suppose you are importing hundreds of images into a web-based
photo gallery, but you have to resize any that are too large for your specifications. You can add a conditional to your
action that checks the size of every file and changes only the ones that are too large, thus saving much time and space.
Conditionals are also useful for nesting actions within actions, playing the nested action only under specified condi-
tions.
To insert a conditional (ImageReady)
1 In the Actions palette, choose the step after which the conditional action should appear.
2 Choose Insert Conditionalfromthe Actionspalette menu,orclick theInsertStepbutton atthe bottom of the
palette and choose Insert Conditional.
3 Specify the circumstances under which the conditional action is executed and the condition itself:
• Select Always to execute the conditional action every time.
• Select Ask to display a dialog box asking the user whether the condition has been met.
• Select Never if you don’t want the conditional action to be executed.
• Use the remaining options (Image Aspect Ratio, Image Width, Image Height, and so on) to define the condition
that must be met for the conditional actions to be performed.
4 In the Perform The Following Actions area of the dialog box, choose an action to perform if the condition is met:
Play Action Performs the action you choose from the pop-up menu.
Include Specifies the number of steps to be performed before the action ends. The steps are performed only if the
condition is met, and ignored otherwise.
Skip Specifies a number of subsequent steps to be ignored if the condition is met. If the skip condition is not met,
the steps are executed.
Skip Remaining Steps In The Action Finishes the action without executing the remaining steps if the condition is
met; otherwise, all steps are executed.
Cancel Playing The Action Terminates the action at this point if the condition is met.
Repeat Specifies the number of times the chosen number of previous steps are to be repeated.
Beep Plays an alert sound when the condition is met.
To edit a conditional (ImageReady)
1 In the Actions palette, click the triangle to the left of the conditional action to show its conditions and actions.
2 Double-click a condition or action to open the Conditional dialog box.
3 Change the condition or action and click OK.
To specify an output folder (ImageReady)
If you include a Save Optimized step in your action or create a droplet from the action, you can specify the folder in
which images are placed after the action is performed.