Can someone explain for me...

[DianaS]

I apoligze but I'm new to post processing on Photoshop. I got Elements 10 for Christmas and am SLOWLY learning I am not a professional, just someone who likes taking pictures and I like to take friends pictures. One day I'd like to become a professional and get paid to take photos for people. For now I'm happy building my skills on my kids and friends and thier kids. I have seen different "actions" you can buy for photoshop. Kinda like this: Florabella Photoshop Actions - Florabella Collection Photoshop Actions I assume I wouldn't be able to make my pictures have that effect by just working with what I have, correct? Do you guys have any? What do you like about them? Not like? Is this something I should wait to get?

[Rentham]

Actions are just a recorded series of commands in Photoshop. Anything an action can do, you can do on your own.

[Doug Pardee]

Let's see if I get this right. I've been on PSE 3 for a long time, I just made the jump to PSE 10, and I know Adobe threw a wrench in at PSE 4.

PSE 10 can run Photoshop actions. Provided, however, that PSE has all of the tools that the actions use. As the most glaring example, a Photoshop action that uses the Curves tool to set separate curves for the various channels (red, green, and blue) won't work in PSE 10 because PSE 10 doesn't have a curves tool with separate channels.

So... if you could do the process in question by hand in PSE 10, you can use a Photoshop action to automate it for you. Otherwise, not. You can always try it and see. The worst that would happen is you'd have to shut PSE down, delete the unusable action, and restart PSE.

[mrteacherdude]

I'm not an action user. I think I may have tried one once just to see what it does and then study it to see what I like and don't like about it. But I also try to keep my edits pretty basic. You have no doubt noticed that PSE 10 includes a set of guided edits. I may be wrong here, but I think these are similar in function to an action, but you have more control over what happens to the photo along the way. Similar to what Rentham said about actions, the guided edits follow a set of instructions that you can also perform independently of the guided edit.

If you want to find out more about actions and try some for yourself, I think there are some free ones out there; at least there used to be. There is a woman who runs a site called The Coffee Shop Blog (I don't have a link, but it comes right up in a Google search) who offers, or used to offer (haven't been there in quite some time) actions that she developed in Photoshop that will work in PSE. If memory serves me right, she also has a lot of information there about how to install and use them. I believe she offered a few free ones, but also had some for sale. You might want to check it out.