Creating New PhotoShop Actions

One of my favorite aspects of photography is playing with Photoshop Actions. Depending on the location, tone and event, Actions have the ability to make a portrait impactful. One of the elements all of my favorite portraits share is a strong "look."

As a photographer, it is hard to find your "look." At this stage - the stage of constantly learning and growing - I am still playing with the effects in Photoshop. To start learning, I found great tutorials on Pinterest (one of which is to the left). Then, after I learned how the different layers affected the images and which effects I enjoyed the most, I created my own Actions.

The top photo of me (thank you, self-timer) has three Actions I have used this year.

• Autumn Wine was used for a couples/baby announcement session at a winery (it has a vintage feel)
• Navy was used for a toddler's outdoor session (it softens the colors)
• Xmas Navy was used for indoor Christmas portraits (it is cool and more nostalgic).

Scroll to the very bottom of this article to find all three, free for you to use and enjoy!

How do you create your own Actions? I did not know either, but found the answer on Google. Below are the steps taken directly from the Adobe website.

Record an action

When you create a new action, the commands and tools you use are added to the action until you stop recording.

To guard against mistakes, work in a copy: at the beginning of the action before applying other commands, record the File > Save A Copy command (Illustrator) or record the File > Save As command and select As A Copy (Photoshop). Alternatively, in Photoshop you can click the New Snapshot button on the History panel to make a snapshot of the image before recording the action.  

Open a file. 
In the Actions panel, click the Create New Action button , or choose New Action from the Actions panel menu. 
Enter an action name, select an action set, and set additional options:


Function Key
Assigns a keyboard shortcut to the action. You can choose any combination of a function key, the Ctrl key (Windows) or Command key (Mac OS), and the Shift key (for example, Ctrl+Shift+F3), with these exceptions: In Windows, you cannot use the F1 key, nor can you use F4 or F6 with the Ctrl key.
Note:
If you assign an action the same shortcut that is used for a command, the shortcut will apply the action rather than the command.


Color
Assigns a color for display in Button mode.
Click Begin Recording. The Begin Recording button in the Actions panel turns red .
Note: When recording the Save As command, do not change the filename. If you enter a new filename, that new name is recorded and used each time you run the action. Before saving, if you navigate to a different folder, you can specify a different location without having to specify a filename.
Perform the operations and commands you want to record.
Not all tasks in actions can be recorded directly; however, you can insert most nonrecordable tasks using commands in the Actions panel menu. 




To stop recording, either click the Stop Playing/Recording button, or choose Stop Recording from the Actions panel menu. (In Photoshop, you can also press the Esc key.)

To resume recording in the same action, choose Start Recording from the Actions panel menu
To download the actions used in this article, visit:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B2u_ADyNG4nbaHBSM01NOEpoZjQ/view?usp=sharing