Photoshop Actions – Photoshop Friday

With just a click of a button and the blink of an eye, your desired photo effects will appear.

It really is almost that simple. And I only say ‘almost’ because you have to make the action before you can apply it to your image.

For starters, some of you might be wondering just what an Action is. An action is a series of steps that have been recorded and saved within Photoshop to make post-processing a lot faster if you frequently apply the same effect to multiple images.

Take the soft glow that we covered last week for instance. If I had to go through all those steps every time I wanted to apply a glow, I would go crazy! Seeing as I’m a little too young to go crazy, I quickly made the choice to create an action just to save me time later.

But how do you make an action? Easy.

Step 1: On the right hand side panel, click the Action icon that looks like a ‘play’ button

Step 2: Click the “Create new action” icon in the action panel

Step 3: Give your action a name

Step 4: Click “Record” to begin recording your steps

Step 5: Work through all steps of your desired effect as normal

These are the steps that my Soft Glow action performs on each image

Step 6: Once your effect is complete, click on “Stop playing/recording”

To use this action on a photo is even easier.

Step 1: Open your image in Photoshop

Step 2: On the right hand side panel, click the Action icon that looks like a ‘play’ button

Step 3: Adjust the new layers of your image as necessary to create a seamless look

 

And you’re done! See, I told you it was easy.

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