WHAT IS A PHOTOSHOP ACTION?
Actions are among Photoshop's greatest features. They contain recorded series of Photoshop commands. They are often used to automate certain repetitive tasks. Moreover, as you will experience in PanosFX.com, actions can be used to apply very complex effects to your images within a few seconds.
WHERE DO I SAVE THE ACTION FILES?
The actions available on my site are compressed as zip files. Therefore you must double click the zip file first and extract its contents to your hard disk. The file format for Photoshop actions is: filename.atn. You don't have to save the extracted files in Photoshop's preset folders. I recommend you create one or more folders anywhere in your hard disk in advance, where you will be storing Photoshop actions and loading them up on demand. This approach will help you maintain an organized collection and it will free valuable resources.
WHAT IS THE ACTIONS PANEL?
The actions panel is a special Photoshop 'window' that allows you to run / record actions. If the panel is not visible then select Window > Actions from the main menu. After you load an .atn file in the actions panel, it shows up as a little folder. This is called the actions set. This set may contain one or more actions that produce different effects.
HOW DO I LOAD & RUN AN ACTION?
The image below shows the actions panel and highlights the four steps you need to follow, in order to load and run Photoshop actions:
- Click the options button in the upper-right panel corner (arrow 1) to reveal the options pop-out menu.
- Select "Load Actions" (arrow 2). Navigate to the folder where you saved the actions and load the file.
- The actions set shows up as a little folder that contains one or more actions. If necessary, click the little triangle to the left of the folder icon (arrow 3) to expand the set's actions.
- Finally select an action and click the Play button (arrow 4).
Alternative ways of loading actions in Photoshop:
- Use Windows Explorer (PC) or Finder (Mac) to navigate to the actions folder and double click the action thumbnail. Photoshop will launch if it is not already open and the actions will be loaded in the actions panel. If Photoshop doesn't launch, then for some reason the .atn files are not associated with Photoshop anymore. In this case please refer to your OS instructions to re-associate the .atn files with Photoshop.
- You can drag the action file thumbnail(s) onto Photoshop's work area (PC, Mac) or you can drag them onto Photoshop's dock icon (Mac). The actions will be loaded automatically in the actions panel.
Enjoy!
Panos Efstathiadis
