Understanding Actions In Photoshop

On this video photographer Nino Batista goes back to Photoshop basics and looks at everything you need to know about using actions in Photoshop.

Actions are simply a set of functions or operations that a user can record and use later on automatically with one click of a bottom in Photoshop (you can also have actions in windows or MAC and many other programs – but that is a matter for another lesson). An action can be simple – like reduce opacity and increase contrast or can be very complex involving many changes to you image with a single click of the mouse.

Batista also mentions the Phlern actions from phlearn (called the phlearnmethod), we actually mentioned these in this video in the past – we also highly recommend them and you can download a few of them for free to check out what they do.

As we have mentioned in one of his previous videos, Batista created a set of actions that work well for his style of retouching and he demonstrate that in the video. Of course this might not necessary apply to what you might be doing so you might want to create a set of actions based on your style of editing. If you are interested in Batista’s actions – you can download them from here.

You can find many more Photoshop video tutorials on LensVid’s Photoshop section. You can check out all of Batista’s videos here on LensVid on this link.

Iddo Genuth

Iddo Genuth is the founder and chief editor of LensVid.com. He has been a technology reporter working for international publications since the late 1990's and covering photography since 2009. Iddo is also a co-founder of a production company specializing in commercial food and product visual content.