Photoshop Actions Explained

Personally, I have been using Photoshop Actions for over a year. I have a bunch that I bought from other vendors and a bunch that I made myself. So until I released my Shirley Collection it never occurred to me that not everyone knows what they are. In fact, I quite forgot that I didn't stumble across them until several month after my first sessions. So let me explain...

What are Photoshop Actions?
When you edit your pictures, did you ever notice that there are certain editing steps you ALWAYS do, such as increasing the Saturation, then add Contrast, and then tweak the Levels? Let's say you have 30 images to edit. It can be very tedious to go through every single image and do the same steps over and over again. That's where Actions come in. Instead of manually repeating your editing steps, you can go through them once and record exactly what you are doing. This recording is called an "Action". You can now apply it to the 29 other images you still have left to work on and all the steps you have recorded are now done automatically. And much faster than you could possibly do it by hand.

Why Use Photoshop Actions?
First of all, they are incredible time savers. But they can also help improve your photography. Of course, if you are serious about your business/hobby, there is no way around learning as much as you can about lighting and camera settings and posing. But there is hardly any SOOC (straight out of camera) picture that would not benefit from a little editing. From my own experience, Photoshop is not a program one can easily master in a couple of weeks, though. In fact, it is quite complicated. And I know that it is difficult for someone with only basic editing skills to compete with other photographers who are advanced editors. Photographers and designers who offer their own Actions basically let you purchase their editing steps and therefore their knowledge. Which can improve your photography through editing.

So are Actions only for Beginners?
Not at all! I know a lot of successful and advanced photographers who love actions. Again, they save a lot of time. And you can use Actions and only adjust the opacity to taste or you can use them as your basic foundation that you tweak until it becomes "your own".

The picture below shows you the layers palette after the sample Action "Dreamy" is applied. You can either click on the folder "Dreamy" itself, just like I did in the picture, and adjust the opacity to taste. Or you can click on each new layer separately and adjust settings, opacity, and colors.

Actions are definitely for anyone (who has Photoshop...), whether you purchase them from others or make them yourself. It is important to realize, though, that every image is different. Actions usually target specific colors, so an Action that is supposed to enhance pastel colors will not look well applied to a heavily saturated and colorful image. That's why you get a Collection of Actions, so you have a selection to choose from.

Over the next couple of weeks I will add installation steps for Elements and CS versions as well as more detailed information.