Introductions:

For this project, we will be creating thumbnails from a batch of images. Be sure to back up all the images you chose to manipulate before continuing with this tutorial.

This tutorial was written with Adobe Photoshop versions 6 or 7 in mind. You may find that this tutorial may work with prior versions of Adobe Photoshop as well.

Follow steps 1-9:

1) Open up all the images you want to convert to thumbnails

2) From the “Windows” menu, select “Actions”.

3) At the bottom of the “Actions” tool menu, you should see six button icons. The icons are stop, record, play, folder, document, and trash buttons.

4) Before you can record a set of actions, you must create an action set folder. Click the Actions folder icon and name your action set “Thumbnails”

5) Now click the document icon and name the action “Start”. Than click the “Record” button. Warning! Everything you do now will be recorded; however, if you make a mistake, you can just select the unwanted action layer and drag it to the Actions trash icon.

6) Next, from the “Image” menu, select “Image Size” and a pop-window should open. At the bottom of the pop-up window, make sure that “Constraint Properties” is selected (this keeps the image from distorting). From ether the “Pixel Dimensions” or “Document Size” sections change the width and height menus to percentage and enter 25 in the width and height fields. Click “OK”.

7) From the “File” menu, select “Save As” and choose a place for your thumbnail to be saved. You may change the image format but do not retype a new name!!! Now click “Save” or “OK”.

You may now close the window of the image that was reduced and saved if it is still open (keep all the other image- windows open) and click stop in the “Actions” tool menu. You have created your fist “Action”.

9) To run the “Thumbnail” action on another image, just select the first action layer (we called the first layer “Start”) inside the “Thumbnail” folder and click play. Repeat this step until complete.

For more information please search or post questions to the Forum.

Here is a list of books you may want to check-out for further reference on this topic.

Books:
Photoshop 7.0 Classroom in a Book by Adobe Creative Team
Photoshop 7 Down & Dirty Tricks by Scott Kelby (Paperback)