Huge Essential Collection of Photoshop Actions to Speed up Your Work

In this article tripwire magazine presents a very large collection of Photoshop actions. A Photoshop action is a series of tasks that you play back on a single file or a batch of files. Actions can make nearly any change to an image and examples could be changing the image size, adding new layers, appling filters, saving files in a specific format etc.

Actions can include stops to allow user to give input. This could be to let users perform tasks that cannot be recorded or where it is part of the Action design to ajust a parameter for a filter. Actions are stored in <file name>.atn files and can easily be loaded into the Actions floating palette.

This article provides a large list of ready to use Actions but you can also use them to be inspired to record your own, customize existing (just double click on sub tasks), and batch-process actions, and you can manage groups of actions by working with action sets. Looking into how great actions apply superior effects is a very good way to learn new tricks. Lets get started.

[exec]$filestr = file_get_contents(‘http://www.tripwiremagazine.com/googleadsensebelowmoretag.inc’); echo $filestr;[/exec]

Collection of Photoshop Actions

Hundreds of actions -X3 Digital Extremes vol 01

This is simply photoshop magic when it is best and very high quality for being free actions! Loads of awesome actions for creating digital patterns and other amazing effects on photographs etc. all packed together here… I’m sure we can all lean some trick by investigating these further. There are hours and hours of investigations and surprises waiting for you in here. They are created to make it easy for you to use and fx. new windows are opend to awoid the original to be overwritten.

50 Photoshop Postwork Actions

Introducing a new huge pack of actions for Color Postwork

Gum Bichromate Print

A Photoshop action set including two actions (for up- and lengthwise photos) and a texture to emulate the look of Gum Bichromate Prints from the 19th century. I tried this action and the effect is simply brilliant!

Old Photo Action

Comics Photoshop action

This action will turn your images into comic looking pictures. Will run smooth on CS2, I am not sure about the other version… Would be nice if you let me know!

Page Curl Photoshop Action

With this action you can create a page curl in any of the four corners of an image.

Another Page Curl action is available here. (free but registration regquired)

Floating Lineart PS Action

Takes one click of the mouse to obtain clean black lines on a transparent background.

Convert white to transparent

This small action takes the information from the background of an image (namely the outlines of a drawing) and puts it in a spare layer, where only black exists. The white pixels are now transparent, and the grey pixels are actually black with reduced opacity.

CAUTION: this is intended to work with grayscale images. RGB images are supported, as long as the background containing the artwork does not have colors.

9 Photoshop color Actions Pack

Photo cube effect

Apply 3D photo cube effect to any image. I played with this action and it is amazing how the box is build up. But it is not easy to use as the image used is not centered on the box sides as expected. Also you need to have one layer onle called background so if you paste in the image you want to use it is necessary to flatten to the background layer.

Soften skin effect

Produces a natural ‘clean’ appearance whilst retaining important skin textures.

I tried this action and it works ok. I just used the lasso to select an area on and above the nose for a test run of the action. I found that you should lower the Gaussian Blur significantly compared to the value it suggests.

Crystal Ball Action

Turn your photo into a “Crystal Ball&quot.

To make the results look like a real Crystal Ball, you’ll want to start with an image that’s been cropped to be square, but you can also get interesting effects by running the action on a rectangular image.

Black And White by Jean Billey

An action which converts your pics into black and white ..inspired by Russel Preston Brown

Hand-colored Vintage Photo ATN

Action includes: Ageing; Colour; Cracks; Bending and as a bonus Old Paper Style. Please read the Instructions first, before you run the action.

Out of Bounds (free but registration regquired)

With this action you can create reallly cool effects where objects is placed out of bounds of an background image. It is a powerful effect ex. to catch peoples attention fx. a specific area on a website front page.

Photographers Collection

A collection of Photoshop Actions developed with the photographer in mind.

13 more Free Photoshop Actions from Turning Turnip

Polaroid Generator

Automatically frame an image in a Polaroid border with this set of Photoshop actions.

Border and blend

These 2 sets of actions play tricks with borders and shadows to give your images a pseudo-3D look:

1. The B&B actions.
This set is one of my old classics; it contains many variations of the same border @ bending theme.

2. The Discrete actions.
An alternative, very elegant approach to the particular technique.

Puzzle Action

This is my first attempt at an action set that makes different jigzaw puzzle effects. There have been made two tutorials for you, a basic tutorial and an advanced tutorial showing you how to use the actionset. Follow these tutorials and you’ll be making cool “puzzle images” in no time at all!

FilmStrip Action

The FilmStrip Action 1.0 takes three images of your own choice and makes a negative. There are three different actions included in this file. One makes a filmstrip shown in a perspective view like the one shown above this text.

Like the touch of rain!

The actions simulate various elements, such as larger and smaller raindrops & water flowing over a foggy window. All layers are left intact at the end.

13 Art style actions

High quality art actions below I played with Conceptual.

• INK: This will vectorize your line art, and/or photographs. Photograph render is a bit crude.
• AIRBRUSH: Makes a photograph looks like it was airbrushed.
• OIL PAINT: Makes a photograph look like an oil painting (most of the time). Works best with very high resolution images (increase your image size if needed).
• PENCIL: This will pencil render a photograph. Three settings include: Sketch, Conceptual, and Tromp l’Oiel.

TackIt! Mini action

The “TackIt! Mini” action creates a web-ready picture tacked up on a bulletin board. This handy little effect has 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.

Fan

The action creates 20 slats and adds a number of decorative elements, making use of semi-transparent layers. In addition to the main effect, the action creates another two interesting perspectives.

More actions from panosfx.com

Vintage Photo

This is an action for photo ageing. Photo must be larger than 200 px.

Color Actions 2

12 good color actions here and many many more at deviantart.com

1. Soft Love – A color adjustment that has a soft/pinkish/pale affect on skin with a feathery gloss over it.
2. Hard Love – Same as Soft Love but without the feathery gloss and a pinch of added contrast.
3. Missing Mile – A dark adjustment that has a tendency to turn some skin shades a pale green. Complete with a vignette and an almost diffused look.
4. Professional BW
5. Professional BW Grain – On some photos, depending on how large, the grain can be a bit overruling or too little. If it doesn’t work out, use number 4 and experiment with gaussian noise.
6. Inverted Mary – A very interesting color adjustment (my personal favorite) that has an almost pop-art affect on skin.
7. Inverted Mary Blu – Same as number 6 but with an extreme fill of blue.
8. Soft Bleach – Bleaches out the color and gives the photo a feathery gloss.
9. Dreaming – Gives a high contrasted and feathery look.
10. Summer – Gives a warm glaze, very summerlike.
11. Spring – Gives a greenish/yellowish glaze, very springlike.
12. Happy – And adjustment that I thought this piece wouldn’t be complete without. The classic, poloroid-esque remix

Eye Color

An individual Action to color some eyes..

Old Parchment action

Now you can create your own famous document or treasure map! All you have to do is play the action and then print it out. You get an 8 1/2×11 inch piece of paper with tears, yellowed edges and other artifacts.

Cross-Processing

Cross-processing, briefly, is a photographic technique where (usually) slide film (E6) is processed in the set of chemicals usually used to process print film (C41). (Less common is cross-processing in the other direction — print film processed in slide film chemicals) The result is images with oddly skewed colors and increased contrast and saturation.

The problem we’re running into now, however, is that this process depends on shooting with film. What happens if you’re one of the photographers who have made the jump to digital?

Lars

Lars started tripwire magazine back in January 2009. He is really passionate about web design, web development and loves to look into new technologies, techniques, tools etc. and to write articles for his readers.