Photoshop CS5: The Missing Manual

Sharing Actions

When it comes to actions, folks love to share—there are tons of actions floating around on the Web. Most are free (though you'll probably have to register with the website you're downloading from), but you have to pay for the more useful and creative ones. Sharing actions is pretty easy; the only requirement is that you save your actions as a set (Saving Your Actions) before uploading them to a website.

Figure 18-7. Top: Your droplet looks like a big, fat blue arrow. Bottom: To use a droplet, drag and drop a file or folder on top of its icon. If Photoshop isn't currently running, it launches automatically. If you're using a Mac, you need Snow Leopard (OS X 10.6) or higher to use Droplets in 64-bit mode. If you're using an earlier version of OS X, you can always launch Photoshop in 32-bit mode instead (the box on page 6 tells you how).

Loading Actions

One of the best action resources is the Adobe Studio Exchange website (www.adobe.com/exchange). Others include Action Central (www.atncentral.com), PanosFX (www.panosfx.com), and ActionFx (www.actionfx.com). (These sites are also great resources for brushes, textures, and so on.) Most of these sites arrange their goodies by program, so you'll have to choose Photoshop and then Actions. Downloading and analyzing actions made by other folks is a fantastic way for you to learn what's possible. That said, actions that are short ...