Best Design Options

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There is a whole world of difference between being a lazy designer and being a smart and efficient one. Using and saving out sets of actions, layer styles, brushes, gradients, keyboard shortcuts, and everything else that you think you are going to use again in the future is a smart way to approach designing.

Photoshop actions are not as popular as Photoshop brushes, plugins and other features of Photoshop. Even I, myself, only found out about this special feature of Photoshop and actually started taking advantage of it when I upgraded to Photoshop CS2, when in fact, Photoshop actions have been there since Photoshop version 5, if I am not mistaken.

Photoshop users often overlook Photoshop actions because of the misconception that this feature is difficult to master. But if you take a closer look at Photoshop actions, you will realize that they are easy to use and can in fact help you save time and increase productivity by automating things for you. Examples of these tasks that can be automated using actions are applying a series of repetitive changes to a group of images, for example.

What are Photoshop Actions?

A Photoshop action action is actually a recording of a series of tasks performed in Photoshop and saved in a format with .ATN extension. Once created, you can apply that action on an image or text or a series of images or texts. You can even make an action to create an image from scratch. So if you find yourself repeating the same tasks in Photoshop, it’s time to learn how to write a Photoshop action. Whether it’s making a color photo into a black and white image or converting an image for the Web, you can reduce hundreds of Photoshop steps to the click of a single button. Photoshop actions are one of the most powerful features of Photoshop that you must take advantage.

How to Use Photoshop Actions

Also, if Photoshop actions can be recorded, then these recorded actions for reproducing techniques and creating special effects can also be shared with other Photoshop users. To load a saved Photoshop action, just go to the actions palette (if it’s not opened yet, go to “Windows” and make sure that “actions” is checked or just press the shortcut “Alt+F9”) then click “load actions” or “replace actions”. A “load” dialog box will pop up and then select the saved actions that you have from your disk. The load actions command will load the new actions while the replace actions command will replace the default actions or the current actions in the actions panel.

So are you in the mood for some actions? Here, I am listing down some free Photoshop actions, such as color effects, photo effects and text effects actions, that you may download and use in Photoshop for free. Just to make sure, even if these Photoshop actions are free, I encourage you to read the terms of use in each download page.

1. FREE PHOTOSHOP ACTIONS: Soften Skin Effect
This effect softens skin and produces a natural ‘clean’ appearance while retaining important skin textures.
Use this to get a virtual makeover.

DOWNLOAD FREE PHOTOSHOP ACTIONS

2. FREE PHOTOSHOP ACTIONS: Black and White Effect
If you always need to convert colored images to black and white and don’t have a plugin to do so, this effect will be very useful for you.

DOWNLOAD FREE PHOTOSHOP ACTIONS

3. FREE PHOTOSHOP ACTIONS: Photoshop Post-Work Actions
Use this 25 actions for some photography post-works. Absolutely free to use.

DOWNLOAD FREE PHOTOSHOP ACTIONS

4. FREE PHOTOSHOP ACTIONS: Color Enhancing Actions
The pack contains a variety of actions to enhance the colors of your photographs or images. Included in the pack are “colorboost,” “softlight,” and “contrastboost” actions.

DOWNLOAD FREE PHOTOSHOP ACTIONS

5. FREE PHOTOSHOP ACTIONS: Cross Coloring Tool
This pack includes a set of actions for cross-coloring of image tone from dark to mid-range to light tones.

DOWNLOAD FREE PHOTOSHOP ACTIONS

6. FREE PHOTOSHOP ACTIONS: Photographt Actions Set

Incorporated in this excellent collection pack are popular photo effects, such as HDR, Lomo, Velvia, Xpro, among others.

DOWNLOAD FREE PHOTOSHOP ACTIONS

7. FREE PHOTOSHOP ACTIONS: Sharpening Toolkit

Sharpening is an important aspect of image editing. As long time Photoshop users, we know that sharpening cannot be achieved with just a single click. There are plugins that you can buy for sharpening image but a free Photoshop action could be a better alternative. This set of actions are useful for sharpening RGB, CMYK and monochrome photos.

DOWNLOAD FREE PHOTOSHOP ACTIONS

9. FREE PHOTOSHOP ACTIONS: Comics Photoshop Actions
This action will turn your images into comic looking pictures. The actions  run smoothly on CS2.

DOWNLOAD FREE PHOTOSHOP ACTIONS

10. FREE PHOTOSHOP ACTIONS: Simple Stamp Generator
Using these actions, you can automatically create a stamp graphic. A PSD file with a few examples and a PNG file which contains the borders of the stamp are also included.

DOWNLOAD FREE PHOTOSHOP ACTIONS