Adobe plans to implement this interface across all of its graphics applications. A Trove of New Filters Photoshop 4.0 comes with 48 new effects filters, bringing the total to 90. One of them, the Digimarc filter, offers copyright protection by embedding digital watermarks in images. To use this filter, you must pay an annual fee. While not as powerful as a scripting language such as AppleScript or VisualBasic, the Actions palette lets you define simple macros that can be executed on a single image or applied to all of the images in a folder.
Actions can be especially useful in preparing images for publication on Web pages.
You can, for example, record a macro to scale an image to thumbnail size, sharpen it, reduce the number of colors, and save the result. This Action can then easily be applied to an entire folder of images. Photoshop 4.0 comes with a user manual, tutorial CD, and online help.