A Photoshop action is a recorded set of steps that you can play back at any time and use to edit nearly any image. Photoshop action is powerful feature to automate repetitive image-editing tasks with Photoshop. Actions are managed in Photoshop’s actions panel. When you open the actions panel, you will see all the preset actions. You can record your own actions for future use. Other than that, a quick way to get Photoshop action is online download.
There are a lot of great Photoshop actions downloads on the web. Once you download a Photoshop action, you need to load it into Photoshop. In this article, we will discuss different ways to load downloaded Photoshop actions to Photoshop.
Using the Photoshop Actions Menu to Load External Actions on Windows or Mac
One way to load an action is to use the menu in Photoshop’s Actions Window. To open the menu, click the arrow in the upper right corner.
Then select “Load Actions…” and browse to the folder on your hard disk where you have placed the action (.atn) file.
Drag-and-Drop to Load External Photoshop Actions on Windows
Another way to load a Photoshop action is to use drag-and-drop with your mouse:
Open Photoshop and open the folder that contains the Photoshop action set that you want to load, and position the two windows side-by-side (see screenshot below).
Click the action file (the one ending in “.atn”) and while holding down the mouse button, drag the action to the Photoshop window. If you need to load style files, you can drag them in the same way.
Release the mouse button. You will now find the action in Photoshop’s Actions palette.
Drag-and-Drop to Load External Photoshop Actions on Mac
This works for OS X Lion, and probably for other versions.
Open the folder that contains the Photoshop action set that you want to load.
Click the action file (the one ending in “.atn”) and while holding down the mouse button, drag the action to the Photoshop icon on the dock at the bottom of your screen. If you need to load style files, you can drag them in the same way.
Release the mouse button. Photoshop will start, and you will now find the action in Photoshop’s Actions palette.
