Have you ever tried to back up your actions, and realized what a pain it is? Using the actions palette within Photoshop means selecting each action set one by one and exporting them individually. Such a waste of time. It also can’t be automated, so you can’t back up your actions as part of a regular backup procedure this way either.

Happily, there is another way The contents of the actions palette are stored in a special file, in a special folder on your hard drive. So all you need to do it back up that file, and your actions are backed up.  Easy!

The file is called Actions Palette.psp and it lives in the preferences folder for Photoshop. Where to find this folder depends on what operating system you use.

On a mac, it’s in <your home folder>/Library/Preferences/Adobe Photoshop CS4 Settings

On a PC, I can’t keep track since it seems to vary with what version of Windows you are running. So search for “Actions Palette.psp” and you’ll find it.

Bonus: you can also copy this file to another computer, which copies all the actions from one to the other, in one simple file.

…Mike

As far as I am concerned, a Wacom tablet is mandatory for anyone who does image manipulation. The level of precision is unmatched, the ergonomics are dead on (you basically are holding a pen) and the programmability is sweetness. I use a Wacom Intuos3 6″ x 11″ which is perfect for my wide screen.  The tablet itself is wired to a USB port, but the stylus is not. I have three styluses, because at any one time I can only ever find one of them.

(At this point I should mention that my wife thinks I am crazy for posting about mice. To which I reply: Yep.) Read the rest of this entry »

Every once in a while, a new computer bit comes along…something you maybe weren’t expecting, and it makes your computing life so much easier that that going back is painful and frustrating. The Logitech MX Revolution is like that.

I’m a skeptical person, and I had my doubts about a $130 mouse. But after having used it, I can see how that $130 is, if not totally justifed, at least not out-of-this-world crazy. Read the rest of this entry »

Next on the block in my series on mice is the Logitech MX620 cordless laser mouse. Of all the mice that I am reviewing in this series, this is the first one that I had not used before. It’s pretty slick-lookin too.
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I’ve had a trackball even longer than I’ve had a tablet. My first one was a gigantic thing with a ball the size of a billiard ball (in fact I used an 8-ball as the main ball in it for years). They actually still sell it too

I’ve had a one in one form or another since then, as I love them for FPS gaming…the old version of the marble was such that you could fling the marble really fast…too fast for the driver to handle. So it would interpret a huge fling forward as a quick back step, then a run forward…or a step left, then quick right. Killer Now I just use it for aiming. Awesome in Bioshock. But I digress.

More after the jump.
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The first two mice on the block are the most boring: the Microsoft IntelliMouse Explorer and the Logitech generic mouse I got as a kit with a wireless keyboard. Both are pretty basic mice, and so I’ll deal with them together in the same post.
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