How to save and load Actions in Photoshop?

Once you finish recording Actions (see how to record action in Photoshop?) in Photoshop, you may want to save it to avoid the risk of losing it on any kind of crash in your Photoshop. Thankfully, Adobe has made it easy for us to save and load our actions. 

Video Walk-through

Saving Actions In Photoshop

Note: Photoshop does not allow us to save individual actions. We can only save Action Sets. So if you record or edit an action and want to save it, you'll need to select and save the entire action set. So I suggested that you should avoid placing your own actions inside default action sets that comes with Photoshop. Keep all of your actions inside your own action sets, which will make it easy to save them, load them, and keep them organized.

Here we go,To save an action set, first select the set you want to save in the Actions palette. We should have a couple of actions inside your Action Set. For now, I have "My_action_group" set - the "gaussian_effect" action that I created in the previous tutorial. I want to save this action set, so I'll select it in the Actions palette.

With the action set selected, click on the menu icon in the top right corner of the Actions palette, or if you're using Photoshop CS2 or earlier, click on the small right-pointing arrow. This brings up the Actions palette's menu. Click on Save Actions.

Photoshop will then pop up the Save dialog box. Save your action set to a location on your computer where you'll be able to easily access it later. I've created a folder on my Desktop named "my_actions" and I'll save the "My_actions_group" set into this folder. This will make it easy for me to find the action set later if I need to load it back into Photoshop. Make sure you save your action set with the extension ".atn" after the name if you want your actions to be playable on both a PC and a Mac. When you're ready, click on the Save button in the dialog box to save your actions.

Your actions are now saved. If Photoshop crashes at this point, your actions will be safe and you can load them into Photoshop the resides on any PC.

Resetting the Actions Palette to Defaults

Now as we've saved our actions, let's clear every actions leaving the Default Action Set. For this, click on the menu icon in the top right corner of the Actions palette, or the small arrow if you're using a version of Photoshop prior to CS3, and then click on Reset Actions from the menu.

Photoshop will pop up a warning box  asking if you really want to replace the existing actions with the Default Actions set. Click OK to close the dialog box and reset your actions.

Loading Actions Into Photoshop

Now that we've cleared out our Actions palette, let's load the action set we saved a moment ago. Click on the menu icon top right corner of the Actions palette to bring up the menu, then select Load Actions from the menu choices.

This brings up the Load dialog box. Navigate to where you saved your action set on your computer, select the action set, then click on the Load button in the dialog box. My action set was saved to a folder named "my_ations" on my Desktop, so that's where I'll navigate to. I'll click on the "My_actions_group" set, then I'll click Load.

And now, if we look once again in the Actions palette, we can see that the "My_action_group" set has been successfully loaded back in to Photoshop.

You might have noticed that how the action set appears already twirled open in the Actions palette. That's because it was twirled open when I saved it. Action sets will appear either opened or closed after being loaded in to the Actions palette depending on how they appeared when they were saved.

We've now covered everything you need to know to get up and running with Photoshop actions! Cheers!!

How to Create | Record Action in Photoshop?

It is a simple tutorial that will teach you how to create and use actions in Photoshop. If you are new to Photoshop, you may find yourself repeating the same steps over and over again, because you like the effect that certain adjustments have on your photos. Thanks to  Photoshop “actions,” which are basically just a series of steps that can be recorded, by pressing one button, and can be applied to your photo – very similar to a Light-room preset. You can easily create your own actions in Photoshop to simplify your work.

Video Walk-through

I will start opening an image in Photoshop.

Step 1: Get Action Pallete from Window Menu

Step 2: Create a Custom Action Group
Click on the folder icon, Create New Set. You will then a box box, at which point you can rename your folder if you want for easy identification, especially if you have a lot of actions stored in Photoshop.

Step 3: Create a New Action 
With your new set selected, click the Create New Action icon, circled in the figure.

Step 4: Create a duplicate layer 
To create duplicate layer, select the background layer and press Ctrl + J or right click on the background layer and click on Create duplicate layer. This action will be recorded that you can see in action pallete.

Step 5: Apply some adjustment to the layers 
The best thing you can do when you are writing actions is to work with Adjustment Layers. So, every time you want to apply an effect to your photo, select Layer, New Adjustment Layer, and then the type of adjustment you want to make. Adjust Levels Click on Image --> Adjustments --> Levels Set Levels as shown in the figure.

Apply Gaussian Blur

Set Blend mode to Soft Light

Step 6: Stop recording Action 
Go to Action Palette and click on Stop Icon as shown in the figure below;

Step 7: Open new image in Photoshop

Step 8: Apply Action to get the result 
As we have already create an Action named "gaussian_effect" in My_action_group set, we can simply play that action from action palette to apply it onto the new image.

Result:

Black and White Vignette Istagram Effect

This tutorial will show you step by step process of how to apply a black and white Vignette and Istagram effect to an image.

To download the stock that I have used in this tutorial click on this link.

Step 1:
First open up the image with photoshop.

Step 2:  Duplicate the original layer
to avoid any kind of changes to original image.


Step 3: Make some adjustments to the new layer

a) Black and White
Go to Image --> Adjustments --> Black and White
Leave the default values and click on OK.

b) Curves
Image --> Adjustments --> Curve
Set Output = 159
Input = 143

c) Levels
Image --> Adjustments --> Levels
Input levels:
4   --   0.74  --  207

RESULT of step 4

Step 4: Create duplicate layer of Action_layer as Action_layer copy

Step 5: Apply Gaussian Blur
Filter --> Blur --> Gaussian Blur
Set radius pixel to 4.6px

Step 6: Apply Layer Mask
With the Action_layer copy selected, click on add layer mask in layers palette.

Choose Gradient
Type Radial
Fore color - Black
Back color - White
Follow instruction in the given image

Then, click on the center of the image and drag it to any corner and release as shown the figure below:

After applying gradient mask we get the following result:

Step 7: Apply Vignette Effect to the Action_layer copy
Filter --> Lens Correction --> Click on Custom tab
Set Vignette amount to -100

Now its all done. Here is the final result that you will see:

Hope this tutorial was helpful for you. If you like this tutorial do not forget to hit like and share it to your friends. Thanks for reading.

how to turn a photo into pencil sketch – Photoshop tutorial

This tutorial will show you how to turn a photo into sketch.

Download stock used in the tutorial from this link: Click me to download stock

Preview of the final result:

Video Walk through

Step1: After you finish downloading the stock, import it into you Photoshop document. Now with the background layer selected, click on Image menu –> Adjustment –> Desaturate

Step2: Now create a duplicate layer. Right click on the background layer --> click on 'Create duplicate layer'

Step3: Now with the second layer selected, go to Image menu --> Adjustment --> Invert You will see the output as shown in the figure and then set its blend mode to color dodge.

Step4: Now go to Filter --> Blur --> Gaussian Blur Set radius pixel to 20.5px. You will see the output as shown in the figure below:

Step5: Now we are almost done. The only thing left is to apply burn tool to some portions of face and body. Click on Burn Tool Range = Shadow Exposure = 33% Brush size = 30 px Now apply the burn tool to highlighted portions as shown in the figure below

So here is the final result:

Watercolor Corner Brush Pack

Click here to download the brush set

These brushes feature 8 very large corner brushes ranging from 1700-2500 pixels large.

Gladius Brushes

Click here to download the brush set

Visit Axeraider Inc for more brushes and art by Axeraider70 
http://www.axeraider.com/

Please read the terms and conditions before using 
http://www.axeraider.com/brushes/terms.php

The first set of Series 6.

Not compatible with your version of Photoshop? Download 
the PSD with the brush stamps inside! http://www.axeraider.com/dl.php?id=10

This brush set is provided by http://www.brusheezy.com/ so read term and conditions http://www.brusheezy.coom/terms before using it.

52 Grunge Brushes

Click here to download the brush set

The well-known set with 52 grunge brushes. Use it to create a dark effect like in the preview or for wall texture. The possibilitys are unlimited!

The Download zip file contains:

One ABR with 52 brushes 
from 200px to 1000 px on average

Size: 4.73 MB

Freedom - need of all - Photo manipulation

This tutorial will teach you how to take control over the light and mood of a manipulation and how to create a night environment in Photoshop using adjustment layers.

Get stocks from the link : http://www.deviantart.com/download/320013549/freedom___surreal_photo_manipulation_stocks_by_tamubinod-d5aj019.zip

Preview of the final result:

Before you proceed, first download the stocks that I have provided in the link above or click on download stocks. The downloaded stocks then need to be imported into Photoshop.

We will be working on the document with the image below.

Step1:

Lets start making adjustment to the background layer. Right click on the Adjustment below and choose Exposure.

Exposure                --> 1.36

Offset                     --> -0.0078

Gamma Correction --> 0.12

you get to see the following output:

Step2:

Now import the earth image into the working document. Press Ctrl + T to get transformation and then adjust the size and alignment of the layer as shown in the figure below.

Step3:

Change the blend mode of the earth layer into screen. There you will see line edges as shown by the green highlighted portion in the figure below, that needs to be removed. We use eraser tool to remove those portions.

Click on Eraser Tool --> choose eraser type (soft eraser brush) --> Size 494px

Also, set opacity = 63% and flow=42%

you see the following output

Step4: 

Now the person jumping on the air needs to be imported into the working document. First select the person using Quick Selection or Pen Tool. Then, click and drag the image into the working document as shown below.

Step5:

Now, some adjustment is done to the person layer. With the person layer selected, click on the adjustment below and then select Black and White.

Set adjustment for all fields to maximum i.e -200.

The adjustment layer needs to clipped to only person layer. So right click on the black and white adjustment layer and choose clipping mask. You can see result immediately.

Similarly apply adjustment with Curve and Brightness & Contrast as show in figure.

Your layers palette should look like as

Step6:

Now apply a bit of blur effect to the person. Get the person layer selected and then follow the steps - Go to Filter --> Blur --> Gaussian Blur .

A Gaussian Blur box will appear, adjust the blur to 3.6px.

you will see the following output:

Step7:

We are almost done. Type two word texts. "Freedom" and "need of all" with the following setting.

Freedom - 

size=500 pt

color = #000000

blending option: Outer glow - color = #3f61bb size= 76 px

need of all -

size = 150 pt

color= #FFFFFF

Final result:

See video for this tutorial