All About Photoshop Actions.

What are Photoshop Actions?

An action is a series of tasks that you play back on a single file or a batch of files - menu commands, palette options, tool actions, and so on. You can create an action that changes the size of an image, applies a filter to the image for a particular effect, and then saves the file in the desired format. Nice, isn’t it !

Actions can include stops that let you perform tasks that cannot be recorded (for example, using a painting tool).

Photoshop and Illustrator come with predefined actions installed that help you perform common tasks. You can use these actions as is, customize them to meet your needs, or create new actions. Actions are stored in sets to help you organize them.

You can record, edit, customize, and batch-process actions, and you can manage groups of actions by working with action sets.

Free Photoshop Actions

Turning Turnip: Photo cube effect - Apply 3D photo cube effect to any image.

Turning Turnip: Soften skin effect -Produces a natural ‘clean’ appearance whilst retaining important skin textures.

- 9 more Free Photoshop Actions from Turning Turnip

Page Curl Photoshop Action - Create a page curl in any of the four corners of an image.

PanosFX: B & Big picture - A 3-D collage effect

PanosFX: Discrete - Make your images visually more appealing.

PanosFX: Spiral Bind - Make the creation of a spiral binding effect a very easy task

PanosFX: 3D - Out of Bounds Action

PanosFX: Stamp v.2 - A highly customizable stamp action

PanosFX: The Big Picture - Make an image look as a collage made up of 25 individual photographs that are layed down in a ’slightly untidy manner’.

- 32 more Free Photoshop Actions from PanosFX

Color Actions 2 - deviantART

Vintage Photo - deviantART

- more deviantART Photoshop actions

Finesse FX: Old Parchment action

Finesse FX: TackIt! Mini action

- 65 more Free Finesse FX Photoshop Actions - image, text and custom effects

Liknes: FilmStrip Action

Liknes: Puzzle Action

- more Photoshop actions from Liknes - border, text and special effects

Shutter Freaks: Crystal Ball Action

Shutter Freaks: Hayes Island Variant

- more Shutter Freaks Free Actions

Additional resources:

Addicted to Design - Night Vision Effect, Polaroid 600 Instant Film, Lomo, Infrared and 1 Pixel Border effects

Atncentral - Comic Effect Action, Editorial Lomo, Kent’s LensBlur and more

Elated ActionKits - ActionKit 1-5

Mayhem Studios - Red Eye Removal, Productions Action, Sharpen Action and Center Guides Action