A basic element of digital photo utilities is the Task.  A Task takes an image as input and produces an image as output.

These Tasks can be strung together so that the output of one task becomes the input of the next task.  Such a combination of Tasks is called an Action.  Actions are at the heart of the digital photo utilities program.  

They tell the computer what to do with the images that you drag and drop on the digital photo utilities Action Bar.  The image file that you drop on an Action in the Action Bar becomes the input to the first Task.  The result of the first Task then becomes the input to the next Task and so on. 

If you click on an Action button in the Action Bar as shown above, an Action editor window will be shown like the one below.

As you can see, an Action consists of a name, a description and one or more tasks.  This editor allows you to configure the tasks that you want to be performed on your images.  These tasks will be carried out in the order they are listed when the action is executed.  In the action shown above, an image will first be resized and then attached to an email.  A common set of tasks would be to modify the images by resizing or rotating them and then do something with the results like email them or save them to your hard disk.

Name

The text you type into the 'Name' box will appear under the icon for the action in the Action Bar.

Description

The 'Description' is text that is displayed when you pause you mouse over an action in the Action Bar.  It is generated automatically based on the tasks that you have chosen.  If you like, you can override this description with your own description by simply selecting the existing description and typing a new description over it.  At any time you can revert back to the automatically generated description by selecting your description (all of it) and deleting it (with the backspace or delete key).  After you click the OK button to accept the change, the description will revert to the automatically generated one.

To the right of the Description box is the icon for the Action.  If you would like to choose another icon for the action, you can simply click on the icon and Icon Chooser window shown on the left will appear.  You can click on any of the icons to choose it as the icon for the action.

Clicking on the 'Add' button will allow you to add a new task to the list of tasks that this action performs.  The tasks available to you will depend on what utilities you have installed.  The available utilities are described individually.  They are listed in the navigation page on the left side of this page.

Tasks

Clicking on the 'Remove' button will cause the currently selected task to be removed from the  list of tasks.

Clicking on the 'Edit' button will bring up an editor that allows you to configure the selected task.  The individual task editors are described in the next sections.

Clicking on the 'Move Up' button will cause the currently selected task to be moved up relative to the other tasks in the action's list.

Similarly, clicking on the 'Move Down' button will cause the currently selected task to be moved down relative to the other tasks in the action's list.