Astronomy Tools and Annie's Astro Tools issue in PS

[Rattler]

Hi guys. Question about Astronomy Tools and Annie's Astro Actions on PS. When I run any of the actions it runs through everything step by step and required me to press ok each time. I believe it's supposed to just do it. Also it often pops up saying a step is unavailable so it can't complete the action. Any ideas? Thanks.

[alan potts]

I am running the latest PS and the same happens to me, I tend not to bother with using them as many things now I can muddle my way through and as its raining it gives me something to do.

[LightBucket]

Hmmm, I have those and mine all run automatically, and have done since installed, so not sure what to say really as it’s not something I did, it’s just worked from the start.....sorry can’t be more help

[happy-kat]

Anything to do with 32 bit versus 64 bit??

[Rattler]

I'm using the 64 bit version.

[Oddsocks]

Were these working at one time for you and have now changed behaviour?

I don’t know about Annie’s actions but Astronomy Tools action set only works properly with 8 or 16 bit images, I’ve been caught out a few times importing 32bit images and trying unsucessfully to run actions on them. If you import a 32bit image you have to convert it to 16bit mode before attempting to run actions.

One other issue I have noticed several times is that if you open an individual action and toggle the tick boxes for any step in an action a warning message will appear saying what you are about to do may not be reversable, continue, Yes / No?, or words to that effect, if you go ahead and toggle the step then sure enough the action will stop at that point and wait for you to respond to an ok prompt however going back to that step and toggling the selection box back to how it was does not reset the action, it will always stop at the same point again and wait for you to ok. The only way I have found to fix this is to delete the entire action set and reinstall it.

 

 

[Rattler]

They have done this since I installed them. When you say convert to 16 bit do you mean in 'Mode' and then selecting 16 bit? Thats one of the first things that I always do.

[Oddsocks]

On 13/03/2018 at 12:29, Rattler said:

When you say convert to 16 bit do you mean in 'Mode' and then selecting 16 bit?

Yes, convert to 16bit using Mode before anything else.

When you select an action is the dialogue button to the left of the Action name selected and lit?

If the button is 'lit' then the Action will pause at each step in the action sequence and prompt you for an ok, at least this is my experience running Astronomy Tools Action set in Photoshop CS6 for Mac.

To run an action automatically just click on an Action title while making sure the dialogue button to the left of the title remains dark, if it is 'lit' click on it to toggle it off then press the 'play' button at the bottom of the Actions tab.

See following post for pictures and explanations.

Edited March 15, 2018 by Oddsocks
Clarification and correction after testing

[Oddsocks]

Check the following two images for a possible answer to your problem.

Screen shots are from Photoshop CS6 on a Mac.

This is how to enable/disable automatic hands free execution of an Action:

First image, in the Actions list there is a selectable button to the left of the Action name, this is called the Dialogue button, when this button is selected and 'lit' then the Action will proceed step by step and pause where it requires you to interact in some way followed by an ‘OK’ to continue.  (*See footnote below*)

To run an Action without manual interaction select the Action title and not the Dialogue button to the left of its name, if you do accidentally toggle the Dialogue button so it is lit just toggle it again. The box must be dark for the action to run ‘Hands Free'.

 

Second image shows the Actions menu.

Click the menu icon at the top right of the Actions tab to open the Actions Menu.

Click 'Playback' options.

Choose 'Accelerated'... for fastest automatic execution or choose, 'Step-by-Step'... to watch each individual step in an action execute, optionally, define a fixed pause time for each step by selecting 'Pause For'.

For each of these Playback options as long as the dialogue button to the left of the Action title is not lit then the Action sequence will run automatically without user interaction and will follow these option choices. If the dialogue button to the left of the Action title is lit then none of these options will have any effect and the Action sequence will proceed Step-by-Step requiring each step to be acknowledged with an ok.

H.T.H.

 

 

 

*Note: Some Actions do require user input to achieve the best results since they are optimised for a particular 'starting state' of the image, which your image may not meet. Unlike some dedicated astronomy image processing programs Photoshop does not evaluate an image to determine image characteristics and adjust processing parameters to suit the image, you need to manually adjust tool settings used for some Action steps to suit your image. 

To see which steps in an Action normally require user input first toggle the Dialogue button to 'on' (lit) then expand the Action by clicking on the right-arrow immediately to the left of the Action title and scroll down the list of Action steps. Any individual Action step that has the Dialogue button 'lit' would normally be a point where you need to make an adjustment to a setting so that you get the best out of that step.

If you wish, you can choose individual steps in an Action to not require user interaction while leaving other steps that do by disabling the Dialogue button associated with that individual step. When you do this the Dialogue button next to the Action title will change to include a short horizontal bar in the centre of the box, this is notifying you that something has been changed from the way the original Action was created. To restore the Action to the way it was originally written click on the Dialogue button immediately to the left of the Action name and the bar through the centre of the Dialogue button will disappear indicating that the Action has been returned to it's original configuration. 

If you decide to run an Action fully hands free, with the Dialogue button next to the Action title deselected (dark) then you almost certainly will not get the best results from the action. An action should really be thought of as a set of regularised procedures rather than as automatic image processing.*

 

Edited March 18, 2018 by Oddsocks
Clarification

[Rattler]

Thanks for that. I'll have a look.

[Steve06]

Hi All,

I have got a problem with Astronomy tools running at all after the recent PS updates - Is anyone else having this issue or has anyone got any ideas how to fix.  I am relatively new to all this  but it was working fine in PS2018 but now nothing happens on any action when selected???

The article above was excellent for my learning but hasn't helped getting anything to run in my case. Any suggestions?

[wornish]

I have Astronomy Tools and Annies Astro Actions all running fine with the latest version of PS.  CC 21.2.3 running on my iMac macOS Mojave 10.14.16.  

Edited September 24, 2020 by wornish