Peter Eastway's Better Photography Magazine

Photoshop actions can be saved and transported from one computer to another, very easily. If you have a good understanding of computers and their operating systems (Mac OS, Windows XP, Vista etc), then the following instructions will probably be unnecessary.

Download the Photoshop Portraiture Actions .zip file

The download is saved as a .zip file. This means that you will need to 'unzip' (decompress) it before it can be used by Photoshop.

Begin by downloading the file. Click on the download link (you can click here if you like) and save the download to your computer, making sure you know where you've saved it to because you will need to locate it in the next step.

The download file is called Portraiture Actions [Eastway].zip

Unzip The .Zip File

Locate the Portraiture Actions [Eastway].zip file on your computer. To unzip it is easy.

For Windows XP and Vista users, locate and right click on the file and from the resulting menu, click Extract All. Follow the instructions and remember where the extracted file is placed. It will be called Portraiture Actions [Eastway].atn. Optionally, you can double click on the icon and a screen will open with the compressed file inside. Click and drag the file onto your desktop or folder of your choice. The file is unzipped.

For Apple users, simply double click the .zip file and the .atn file will open up automatically.

In both cases, remember where you have saved or stored the .atn file. This is the action file for Photoshop.

Open Photoshop

Open Photoshop. The actions should work in all versions of Photoshop from 7 upwards. If there is a problem with an earlier version of Photoshop, please let us know so we can change these instructions. The actions were developed in CS3 and CS4.

Locate the Actions Palette

These instructions are for both Windows and Mac. Make sure the Actions palette is open - up the top of your screen on the menu line, choose Window > Actions.  (If there is a tick next to it already, it means the palette is already open on your screen.)

Move to the Actions palette. Up the top right of the Actions palette is a menu icon (circled above) - click on this to open the menu associated with the Action palette. Choose Load Actions. That's it. You need to exit Photoshop properly and the action should be saved for future use, but here's a suggestion.

Photoshop Actions Folder

Photoshop saves its actions by default in a special Actions folder. You will find it as follows:

On Windows computers, it's in the program folder, Presets, Actions. See below.

On a Mac, it's in the same place. See below:

That't it enjoy using your actions.

If you need some assistance with the actions or you'd like to watch how Peter Eastway uses the actions and layers, you can purchase a series of inexpensive movies - click here.