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Loading an
Action
The most frequently asked question I receive is:
"Now that I have this action, what do I do with it?" All actions on
this come in zip folders, and you need a program that unzips it, such as
WinZip or
StuffIt Expander to extract the ATN file.
Once unzipped, we recommend placing all your
actions in a common folder. This folder can be placed anywhere on
your system. It does not have to be in your Photoshop subdirectory.
In Windows, for instance, you could create a special folder under My
Documents called "Actions."
Once you have established that folder, open
Photoshop, open the actions palette, click the small triangle in the
upper right hand corner to access the fly-out menu, and choose LOAD
ACTIONS. Using the file dialogue, navigate to wherever you have
placed our actions, in our case, "\my documents\actions". Click the
"Load" button in the dialogue and your actions are in the actions
palette.
There is a simpler way that is not as organized,
but that I use all the time. After unzipping your action, simply
drag and drop it onto the actions palette in Photoshop. (The palette
must be open for this to work.)
When an action
doesn't work
Another frequent question is what to do when
action doesn't work. Here are a few things to check.
First, make certain you haven't changed the name
of the Background layer which should be the bottom layer on the
stack. Some actions requires this naming convention, and if you've
changed the name to, for instance, Layer 0, the action fails.
Second, make certain that you were on the
background layer when you initiated the action. If you had a curves
layer selected, the action will try to affect that, and it won't
work as expected.
Third, see if your image is in 16-bit mode. If so,
the action make by making calls to filters that are unavailable in
this mode. Take these steps:
-Image|Duplicate (This duplicates your image)
-Image|Mode|8-bit ... (This changes your new duplicate image to 8-bit)
Now try to run the action again.
Photoshop
Elements
Actions can be used in Photoshop Elements if the
action consists of steps supported in Elements, but they cannot not
be written within the program. The procedure for incorporating them
varies between versions 2 and 3. An
article
by Barbara Brundage, author of Photoshop Elements 3:
The Missing Manual, published by O’Reilly. explains how to go
about this.
I am happy to post actions converted for Photoshop
Elements on this site, but do not have time to translate and test
them. I welcome the efforts of anyone who wishes to do so.
Using these Actions in Commercial Images
We've received a number of questions from
professional designers and photographers wanting to know if they can
use these actions in their commercial work. As long as you have
rights to the original image, how you use these actions is up to
you.
An action is really a series of instructions to
Photoshop to perform various steps in a set sequence. Some call for
decisions from the users, others don't. No action does anything you
couldn't do on your own if you had the time, knowledge, and
patience. So have at it.
What you may not do is package these
actions as your own work, whether for free or for sale. We do know
of cases where that has happened. |