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 Photoshop 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.

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. PS 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

PanosFX: 3D – Out of Bounds free action, an advanced tool which simplifies the steps needed to create popular Out of Bounds effects.

The action is very flexible, at the beginning you define the border size & perspective, then you define the out-of-bounds areas and add the shadow effects.

Out of Bounds action work in Photoshop CS5, CS4, CS3, CS2 and Photoshop Elements PSE9, PSE8, PSE7 and PSE6.

Turning Turnip: Photo cube effect – Apply photo realistic 3D photo cube effect to any image. You’ll need to play a little with the source image hight and weight to get the desired result.

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

- more Free Photoshop Actions from Turning Turnip

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

PanosFX: Big pictures – A 3-D collage effect, comes as free & commercial version.

The free version of this Photoshop action (and Photoshop Elements action) contains the 25 flat polaroid & the 25 curled polaroid actions of the ‘Big Pictures’ set plus the 25-photos version of the ‘Matrix Collages’ actions.

Download link can be found somewhere in the middle of the page.

PanosFX: Border and bend – 2 sets of free actions to make your images visually more appealing. These Photoshop actions play tricks with borders and shadows to give your images a pseudo-3D look.

PanosFX: a collection of free good old actions – This is a free collection of older yet very good PanosFX actions.

The actions collection includes the following 8 sets of free actions: Big Blue,The Deck, Photo Album, Plasma TV, Scroll, Spiral Bind (sample image below), Video Wall, Weave it!

Most of actions are for both Photoshop and Photoshop Elements, and work in Photoshop CS5, CS4, CS3, CS2 and PSE9, PSE8, PSE7 and PSE6.

PanosFX: Postage Stamp – A highly customizable stamp action to turn your images into very realistic postage stamps.

- more Free Photoshop Actions from PanosFX

Color Actions 2 – from deviantArt. There are 12 color adjustment actions all together in this action set.

Vintage Photo – from deviantART. An action for photo aging. Photo must be larger than 200px. Should work well with Photoshop 6+.

- more deviantART Photoshop actions

Finesse FX: Old Parchment action - create your own famous document or treasure map. Just play the action and then print it out. You’ll get an 8 1/2×11 inch piece of paper with tears, yellowed edges and other artifacts.

Old Parchment action is compatible with Photoshop CS and higher.

Finesse FX: TackIt! Mini action - creates a web-ready picture tacked up on a bulletin board, with a plenty of customization options, including the width of the picture border, the amount of shadow for both the photo and tack, and the color of the tack.

In the free version of this action, final output is limited to 600px width. TackIt! Mini is compatible with Photoshop CS and higher.

- more Free Finesse FX Photoshop Actions and other freebies – image, text and custom effects.

Shutter Freaks: Crystal Ball Action - to make the results look like a real Crystal Ball, you need an image that’s been cropped to be square, but you can also get interesting effects by running the action on a rectangular image.

Shutter Freaks: Hayes Island Variant - a variation on the Hayes Island Cafe effect, which will make a photo look like a painting with a canvas finish.

- more Shutter Freaks Free Actions

Additional Photoshop action resources:

Addicted to Design – Free PS actions can be found at the Free Photoshop Actions menu item. Night Vision Effect, Polaroid 600 Instant Film, Lomo, Infrared and 1 Pixel Border effects.

Atncentral - Free Photoshop actions exchange with over 170 free actions.

Elated Action Kits – Action Kit 1-5

Veerle’s Creating a Photoshop Action.

Professional Photoshop actions:

And at the end, 2 sites with professional photoshop action sets worth buying if you seriously need to give your photography a professional and finished look.

Portrait Magic Pro Actions – The Portrait Magic Pro Actions include 12 different and extensive retouching techniques.

5 Different skin smoothing Actions including: General Smoothing, Naturally Smooth, Surreal Smooth, Male Skin Smoothing, Headshot Smoother, and 5 “Skin Glow” effects. Compatible with Photoshop CS2 or higher.

JHP Actions Complete Set – all 8 of JHP’s popular action sets featuring over 100 unique Photoshop actions including 3 texture actions and 107 JPG texture images.

Included in complete set: Color Lab – 27 Actions, Creative Lab – 27 Actions, Retouch Lab – 12 Actions, The Essentials – 24 Actions, Textures – 3 Actions and 107 HR JPG Textures, Mini Lab – 9 Actions, Mini Lab 2 – 9 Actions, Vintage – 16 Actions.

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Make fun comic book effects for your photos with the help of these 10 comic book photoshop tutorials.