Photoshop action help

So I'm trying to automate some things in Photoshop (I have CS2, but I don't think it matters) and one thing I realized is that if a step in teh action doesn't have an arrow next to it, that it doesn't work. Or is that my perception and that it really does work?

As an example, I'm trying to get my final sharpening to post images to the web since they will always be the same size and I use a multistep sharpening that I read about somewhere since it is easy to reduce or increase rather than fiddling with USM everytime. But that is all beside the point, so I convert to Lab and select Luminance, but it doesn't seem to recognize that I am have switched to the Luminance channel when I throw it in an action. Any thoughts or work arounds (or am I just incorrect and it really was working)?
--
Jason
http://tannerphotography.net

byutanner said:

So I'm trying to automate some things in Photoshop (I have CS2, but
I don't think it matters) and one thing I realized is that if a
step in teh action doesn't have an arrow next to it, that it
doesn't work. Or is that my perception and that it really does
work?

Click to expand...

Arrow? Do you mean the checkmark in the box in the action step? Yes, that has to be checked. If a step converts to lab, selects the L channel, etc, they must checked.

byutanner said:

As an example, I'm trying to get my final sharpening to post images
to the web since they will always be the same size and I use a
multistep sharpening that I read about somewhere since it is easy
to reduce or increase rather than fiddling with USM everytime. But
that is all beside the point, so I convert to Lab and select
Luminance, but it doesn't seem to recognize that I am have switched
to the Luminance channel when I throw it in an action. Any
thoughts or work arounds (or am I just incorrect and it really was
working)?
--
Jason
http://tannerphotography.net

Click to expand...

--Go to the Actions palette > top left arrow > Playback Options > set these to a 1 or 2 second interval and play the action. The interval allows you to check whether your action reall works or not.

Julian

http://www.pbase.com/julianht/

Life expands or contracts in proportion to one's courage.
Anais Nin

I know how they need to be checked. I am talking about the arrow, you know how you can expand some to see what the details are (like for a Gaussian blur you can expand it open to see how many pixels the blur is set for) but for those ones they don't have an arrow. Does that make sense? Thanks for the thought.
--
Jason
http://tannerphotography.net

I'll give that a try. I haven't done that before. Thanks!!
--
Jason
http://tannerphotography.net