Photoshop Action for Making an Outline from a Selection (Useful for Tutorials)

[Yutosi]

This is a very simple and basic Photoshop Action that I made but I find it extremely useful when making tutorials, and I thought someone else might find it useful as well. It's great for when you want to show an image and direct the viewer to a certain part of the image, or tell them to select or click some button... well you get the idea.

What does it do?
It turns a selection into a rasterized red outline on a new layer.

Simply draw a selection with a marquee tool, and click play on this action and you will have a red outline on a new layer. Here's an example and instructions:



Download The Action Here:
Red.Outline.Selection.atn

[psIloveyou]

This is great!

Can I change the color of the outline?

Thank you for sharing your action Yutosi.

[iDad]

I very rarely use actions but I may start, gotta save that one! Thanks!

[KRF]

Actions save you so much time, if you are doing the same thing over and over again, iDad, just start using them, and stop being a little stone age guy lol

[iDad]

Someone gotta stay in touch with the Stonies......... lol

[Yutosi]

Thanks for the replies, I'm happy you guys found this useful.

@psIloveyou - I don't think you can change the color in my action, but you can easily create a new one with any color you want. Just go to the actions panel and twirl open the little triangles next to each step on my action to see what I did.

It's basically just the following:
New Layer
Fill Selection with the color you want
Select --> Contract 3px (or any number of px... this will be how thick your outline is)
Clear

That's all it's very simple.

If you have trouble I can make one for you with any color you want.

[3ahoode]

thxxxxx great post

[buckbear]

Don't go out and buy an action. Just use quick-mask mode to select a gradient in the picture, and then either "lens blur" filter it or "gaussian blur" if "lens blur" is not available in your version.