Actions are a feature of Photoshop that allow you to automate tasks. So you can record your steps as you work as an action and then play them back to make repetitive tasks more simple to perform. You can also find actions on the web that others have created and download them to use yourself. In this post I’ll explain how to find, download, install and play an action.
To find actions on the web, search for “Photoshop Actions” in your favorite search engine. You can also go to Adobe Marketplace and Exchange site where you can find a lot of actions for downloading. These are rated by other users so it is a good place to find good actions. ?
The action I will show you how to install and use is a filmstrip action for the PC that you will find at http://www.photoshop-action.no/specialfxgallery.htm. Download the filmstrip action to your computer and then unzip the file to expand the contents. Although this action states that it’s suitable for Photoshop 6, 7 or CS, it works in versions up to CS4. As a rule of thumb, most older actions work just fine in later versions of Photoshop.?
The zip file contains a .doc documentation file, a .atn action file and a .psd Photoshop file. Always read the documentation as it often contains an explanation of what you need to do to make the action work correctly.
In this case you must create a folder called PStemp in the root directly of drive C and copy the file pstemp_3pics.psd from the zip file into that location. Do this now and leave the folder of extracted files open on your screen.
The instructions go on to tell you to close all open images and to open the three images to use for the filmstrip. It says these will be resized to approximately 730 x 530, (in reality they are resized to approx 735 x 575 pixels). The developer suggests that the finished filmstrip looks best when you use landscape images. The order of the images as you open them is the left to right order of images in the filmstrip.
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