QuickProofs™ by John Hartman

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Using QuickProofs with Photoshop CS

Adobe has instituted minor changes in Photoshop CS contact sheet function that affect the output look of the finished QuickProofs pages. In order to run the action in Photoshop CS, you will need to make a small, one-time-only adjustment that should only take a few seconds. Once made, your QuickProofs action should run in Photoshop CS exactly as it did in Photoshop 7.

Please download one of the following files:

Installation Instructions:

  1. Download the appropriate file above and expand the archive file. For Macintosh users, use Stuffit Expander (your browser may automatically expand it after download). Windows users should double-click on the Self-Extracting EXE file after download and extract the file to a location on your hard drive (C:\QuickProofs is the default).
  2. Make sure Photoshop CS is closed.
  3. From the Finder (Mac) or from Explorer or My Computer (Windows) open your Applications or Programs folder, then open your Adobe Photoshop CS folder.
  4. Next, open the folder called Plug-Ins.
  5. Locate and open the folder titled Adobe Photoshop Only.
  6. Drag and drop the plug-in file (that was extracted from the downloaded archive in Step 1) onto the Automate folder inside the Adobe Photoshop Only folder. See graphic to the right.
  7. You will get an alert notice telling you that the file already exists in this location, and asking if you want to replace it. Click Replace.
  8. Launch Photoshop. Your QuickProofs action should now function as before, with no other modifications necessary.

How to Rearrange the File Order in Photoshop CS

(NOTE: this has nothing to do with the Photoshop Action instructions above; it's simply an extra new function you can use with QuickProofs.)

The Photoshop CS File Browser now allows you to manually rearrange the order of the files in a folder, giving you complete control over the layout and look of each individual QuickProofs page.

To rearrange the file order, simply open your HOT FOLDER JPEGs in the File Browser (File > Browse...) to show the file thumbnails in the folder. Click on any thumbnail and drag it to a different location between two other thumbnails and release the mouse. The file moves to this new location.

Next, at the top left corner of the Browser, in the new "Mini-Finder," click on "Automate" and go to "Batch Rename." In "Destination Folder," make sure "Rename in same folder" button is clicked (it is clicked by default). In the first "File Naming" pulldown, go to "3 Digit Serial Number." In the next file naming pulldown to the right go to "Document Name." Click OK. The files are now renamed with a 3 digit numerical prefix that allows Photoshop to make your contact sheet in the same file order as you see in the Browser. See graphic. (If you do not rename the files, Photoshop will build the contact sheet in the original order, ignoring any changes you made in the Browser.)

Now you can play the QuickProofs action and your contact sheets will build in the order you sorted them. Cool!

Preserving your QuickProofs and other custom action sets when upgrading from Photoshop 7 to CS

When you upgrade to a new version of Photoshop, your custom settings do no automatically upgrade along with the program. You need to save the settings in PS 7 you wish to keep and load them into the new version.

(NOTE: this assumes you have not already deleted or uninstalled Photoshop 7 off your hard drive, which you should NEVER do until you have been running the new version for several weeks and are comfortable that you have all the settings you need from the old version.)

Here's how to save your QuickProofs actions:

You spent a lot of time getting your QuickProofs action to run just right. You can save the effort of having to recreate the action in Photoshop CS. Close Photoshop CS, launch Photoshop 7 and single-click on the QuickProofs PS7 action set folder (or QuickProofs PS7 v1.1, if you have upgraded) in the actions palette to select and highlight it. Then click on the upper right-hand corner triangle in the actions palette and pull down "Save Actions." A navigation box comes up. Navigate to your Photoshop CS folder in your Applications or Program Files folder and open the Presets folder, then open the Photoshop Actions folder. Save your action set inside this Photoshop Actions folder.

You can also save any other actions sets you wish to carry over from Photoshop 7 in this same location by single-clicking those action sets and saving them in the Presets folder of Photoshop CS, as described above.

Now launch Photoshop CS. Click on the same black triangle in the upper right-hand corner of the actions palette to access the fly-out menu. Scroll down to the bottom of the menu and you will see your QuickProofs actions (and others, if you loaded them). Click on it and voila! the action set appears in your actions palette. Best part about it is that you don't need to make any modifications to run it. Just pick up where you started and be productive!