Steps

[Forkbeard]

Does anybody have any advice on creating steps in Photoshop?

Obviously I can do this by hand, but I'm interested specifically in a procedural approach, preferably using Actions.

Example 2.jpg

[Larb]

Not really sure - perhaps you could try having a few premade step elements which just consist of the step edge-like and the shadows and then you just drop that on top and mask out the parts that extend past the walls. So you'd have evenly spaced straight ones for neat masonry stairs and irregular ones for those similar to the stairs above.

I don't know how well it would work without trying it though.

[Forkbeard]

Not really sure - perhaps you could try having a few premade step elements which just consist of the step edge-like and the shadows and then you just drop that on top and mask out the parts that extend past the walls. So you'd have evenly spaced straight ones for neat masonry stairs and irregular ones for those similar to the stairs above.

I don't know how well it would work without trying it though.

What I'm doing now is layering, so walls layer atop floor and hence steps, so the edges are handled without issue.

Steps are created using another layer, and having a shadow, however the issue arises in that shadows appear on both sides of a step, so I need to go back and remove the other unwanted shadows. The problem comes in knowing which direction to move the selection in order to eliminate the unwanted shadow. I know the offset, e.g. 20 pixels, but I don't know the direction.

It's annoying as clearly action scripts were meant for this kind of thing, but they seem to be severely lacking in relative commands, e.g. select one layer above the selected layer. If someone knows that example is incorrect, please tell me.

So I'm effectively looking for an action that can offset a selection by a pre-determined (a variable?) angle and pixel count.

Hope that makes sense, at least to someone.