Learn to Install Photoshop Actions the Easiest and Best Way

There are many ways to install Photoshop actions into Photoshop.  While there is not a wrong way, there is one method that helps them “stick” better.  We often get support questions asking, “What happened to my actions?  They vanished from the actions palette.”  The most common reason for this is using the “double click” installation method, where you literally click on the .atn file and it opens in Photoshop.  I do not know why it has this imperfection.  Most people love this method since it takes the least effort, up front anyway.

A better, more reliable way to install actions into the full versions of Photoshop is the following:

1. Save the actions you want to install on your computer.  You can create a folder on your desktop and name it “actions” or move them to another easy to find location.
2. If this file says .zip, you need to use unzipping software to unzip it.  Just do a quick Google search if you do not have any software for this purpose.  It is often free. Once unzipped, you will see a file with the extension .atn. This is the important file. Make sure to back up your actions file on an external hard drive or DVD. This way if you lose it due to hard drive failure or if Photoshop has problems, you can quickly reinstall.
3. Open Photoshop.
4. Make sure your “actions” palette is open.  If not, go to WINDOW – ACTIONS.
5. In the actions palette, navigate your way to the top right corner, and click on the lines.  This will initiate a drop down box.
6. Next, click on “load actions” in the drop down menu.
7. Now navigate your way to where you saved the .atn file on your computer. Highlight the action you wish to install.  Then click “open.”
8. Your actions will now appear in the actions palette and are ready to be used. If you want to practice before buying any, download some of our free Photoshop actions today.

Below is our Installing Actions video I recorded many years ago with more details on installing and also using actions in Photoshop:

Holiday Gifts Ideas for Photographers for $50 or Less: Shopper’s Guide

Christmas and Hanukkah are almost here. We want to help you find perfect, affordable gifts for the photographers in your life. You may not be able to get them a Canon 5D MKII or a sought after professional series L Lens but we have creative, budget holiday gift ideas for photographers. If you are a photographer, make sure to “share” a link to this post with someone looking to buy you a gift.

You can also check out our 2010 Photographer’s Holiday Gift Guide, full of 20 more great ideas.

Canon or Nikon Shot Glasses. Use these fun containers for everything from desk organizers (to hold toothpicks, paperclips and more) to small flower pots. Of course if photography or photo editing stresses you out, you can fill them with an energy drink or other liquids. Get 3 shot glasses and use them however you please. Looking for a larger container?  Try the Canon or Nikon Lens Mugs featured in last year’s guide.

Camera Cookie Cutters: This gift is perfect for the photographer with two favorite hobbies, photography and baking. These fun vintage camera cookie cutters can be given as a present or if you like to bake, and your photographer friend does not, buy them for yourself and make them cookies.

iPad Compact Flash and SD Card Readers: Super practical. A great present for anyone who owns an iPad and a camera. These card readers give photographers a quick way to get photos onto their iPads in seconds.

SLR Camera Piggy Bank: Start saving your pennies. I love having this replica camera on my desk.  Any time I have loose change, I can throw it into the “camera” bank.  While it may be impossible to save up enough for a new camera, you may be able to fund some camera accessories just with the coins you deposit in time.

Bokeh Kit:  This is the ultimate fun toy for a photographer.  Turn your bokeh into shapes. This kit makes it easy but we also have an almost free solution with our Do It Yourself shaped bokeh tutorial.

Camera Charm by Fossil: For the charm collecting photographer…

Chalkboard Speech Bubble: What a silly, expressive prop. So many ways to use it to add life to your photos and snapshots.

Macro Lens for Camera Photos (such as iPhone and Droids): If you have ever tried to focus closeup with an iPhone, you know it is difficult if not impossible.  This little rubber band gadget allows you to get super close in and capture a photo, all while on your camera phone. Small and easy to carry, it is a must have for macro camera phone photography.

Metal Photographer Parking Only Sign: This speaks for itself. Great item to hang in the garage or on a wall – a true discussion piece.

Camera Key Chain: Makes a shutter noise too – the perfect stocking stuffer for less than $5.00.  Also see the Vintage Camera Key Fob.

Rainsleeve: This item may be less than $10 but it could be worth thousands to the photographer in your life. If it starts to rain, you need something to protect your gear. And though it looks rather silly, it accomplishes the job.  It is available with and without the extra plastic to cover your flash.

Vintage Cameras: For the collector, look for vintage cameras on eBay, Etsy, and at antique stores and garage sales. You may find some in working condition, but even if they do not work, they make cool props and look great in a photography studio too.

MCP Actions e-Gift Cards: Want the perfect, paperless gift? How about giving some Photoshop actions, Lightroom Presets, or Photoshop online training to a photographer this holiday season? Since you may not know exactly what is on their wish lists, an e-Gift Card is perfect! Available in $25, $50 and more… (cannot mention those other denominations since the title is $50 or less…)

And lastly … this one does not cost you anything! The FREE Facebook Fix Photoshop actions. Make your photos look better on Facebook and the web.

For more great gift ideas for photographers, visit:

The Photojojo Store

Adorama Camera

Amazon

We love seeing your photos editing with MCP’s Photoshop actions and Lightroom presets.  After you edit your photos with MCP products, please share some of your favorite images on the MCP Facebook Wall.  With the updated Facebook Fix actions, this task is easier than ever. After preparing and watermarking your photo or before and after images, visit likemcp.com.

Follow the easy steps listed below to display your work.  We would love you to list what MCP actions or presets were used on your photos. We are excited to see more of your work – you are welcome to post images edited with any of our free or paid products.

Sometimes simple things like downloading aren’t as easy as we’d like. We love sharing special free products with our customers, but with tens of thousands downloading our freebies, it makes it difficult to help everyone with downloading, unzipping and installation issues.  We need to set aside time to fully support our paid customers and work on future product development.

Most MCP free Photoshop actions and free Lightroom presets are available on our website. The most current ones are also available on the MCP Facebook Page for easy access.  Seasonal goodies, like holiday cards, can only be found on our Facebook Page, so you will need to “like MCP” to grab those.

From our website, you literally add the item to your cart, checkout using the “For Freebies” $0.00 option (unless you are buying something else), and then navigate to the download page.  If you miss it, see the FAQ section for screen shots on locating them. If our cart gives you a problem, it is almost always resolved by deleting your cookies and cache and revisiting.

For the quickest access, just go to our Facebook Page. 99% of the time these downloads work great – 1% of the time, the Facebook Apps used to distribute free products have glitches.  We apologize in advance to those in the 1%.  It’s almost always browser incompatibility, pop-up blocker, or firewall issue, but is beyond our means to fix.  If you experience problems, you may let us know your browser and version number and we can inform the “Facebook App Company.”

Below are details on how to find the freebies on Facebook and download them.

Once downloaded, as with all MCP Products, you need to unzip the items.  Most computers come with unzip software to decompress the files. If you do not have this software, please Google unzip software. A few common ones are winzip, 7-zip, and freezip. Once unzipped, install actions into Photoshop or Elements, presets into Lightroom or ACR, or open .PSD templates directly in Photoshop.

If this document helped you, please share with others.  Thank you and enjoy the goodies.

Introducing our 2nd Version of FACEBOOK FIX. Still free but better than ever!

Facebook seems to constantly makes changes. The last update affected photographers. Facebook changed the photo dimensions and added heavy compression to uploaded images. We’ve heard from hundreds of you begging for an easy way to make your photos look better on Facebook, while protecting them from theft.

We have your solution: The updated MCP Facebook Fix.

MCP Facebook Fix prepares your images for the Web through professionally tested actions.

We include easy-to-use actions for:

• Resizing your images
• Sharpening your images
• Inserting your logo
• Adding a copyright watermark
• Showing photos side-by-side

Sharing your before and after edits and displaying your work just got easier.

What’s the catch?

You need Photoshop CS2+ or Elements 5+ to use our free gift. We don’t require for anything in return. We do hope you will start sharing your edited images on the MCP Facebook Wall more frequently.  And we would appreciate you “sharing” the news about Facebook Fix with your friends.  Remember, friends don’t let other friends upload poor quality images to Facebook!

<<< Download Facebook Fix from Our Website >>>

MCP Actions and Crave Designs have partnered to bring you a beautiful free Holiday Card Template plus video tutorial that teaches you how to insert photos easily into any card built with clipping masks.  To use our free card template, you only need Photoshop or Elements.

Just join us on Facebook at likemcp.com to download the free template and watch the tutorial. While you are there, make sure to grab other goodies too, like our Free Photoshop Actions, Mini Fusion and our Free Lightroom Presets, Mini Quick Clicks.

If you get to our Fan Page and “like it” then you will find the Holiday Card Template and other goodies on the sidebar under our profile image.

Polish and Protect Your Images Using Photoshop Actions

When it comes to online presentation of photos, photographers often ask me “how can I protect my images for the web?” or “How can I make my photographs look great for the web.”

There are many different tools and Photoshop actions to help photographers quickly prepare photos with watermarks or logos, branding bars, and resizing and sharpening for the web. Remember any time you use these actions to first save a high resolution version of your image.

Here are some free photographer tools, actions and videos, to help prepare your photos for websites, blogs, Facebook and the Internet:

• MCP Actions High Definition Sharpening and Crystal Clear Web Resize actions. You can probably guess, the Crystal Clear Web Resize is the action you want to get internet ready photos. This action reduces the size and sharpens. Compatible with both Photoshop and Elements (PSE).
• MCP Facebook Fix Photoshop actions. If you use Facebook and are tired of grainy, under-saturated images, this is your solution. These include actions for optimizing single photos and double images that are side-by-side or top and bottom layouts – all are sized for the ideal 720px wide dimensions. There is an included web sharpening action and the Photoshop version converts your files to sRGB too.  Compatible with Photoshop and Elements (PSE).
• MCP Watermark action. The Gallery Frame and Watermark Photoshop actions help polish your images and protect them from copycats too. The watermark action actually has a few parts – first it helps you make a watermark brush. Then you run it to stamp the watermark in whatever customized size, color, and location you desire to deter theft of your images. Use these 1st and then run Crystal Clear Web Resize for the perfect quick, free web solution. Compatible with full Photoshop only.
• MCP Try Me” Blog It Board action. Combine 4 images into this perfect template.  It builds before your eyes and auto inserts your images. While fully functioning, the free version does not include all the branding options and bars you get in the full versions. Compatible with Photoshop and Elements (PSE).
• Photoshop Video Tutorial: How to Make Branding/Watermark Brush. Learn how to make a watermark brush in Photoshop.
• Photoshop Video Tutorial: How to Make a “Branding Bar.” Do you love color blocks and bars on the top, bottom or sides of your images?  You can do these without even using actions. Just a few quick clicks in Photoshop.

If you invest, you can get a lot more variety to polish and protect your images using Photoshop actions:

• Finish It Photoshop Actions. This is the most complete way to have control over your pictures for the web. To protect your photos, it includes watermark and logo insertion actions. To polish and give a finished look, these actions resize and sharpen for web, have have options to rounded corners and edges, add color blocks or branding bars, include a variety of frames and borders to give your photos a finished look.  Compatible with both Photoshop and Elements (PSE).

• Blog It Boards. For combining photos into a collage or storyboard, our original Blog It Boards are innovative and will shave lots of time on your preparation of images for the Internet. These come in the traditional rectangular shape and the rounded edge openings. These sets also include branding bars, logo insertion, and resizing and sharpening for web actions. If you want to see how these work, download the FREE “Try Me” Blog It Board. The Magic Blog It Boards work in Photoshop and Elements. The Rounded variety only works in full Photoshop at this time.

Welcome to our regular MCP Project 52 blog post where we’ll be looking back over week 9 and giving a little sneak preview of the new week 10 theme.

And what a fun week it’s been, the theme “Express yourself” has inspired a lot of people to get out there and take some great photos.  It has been a humbling experience to be the one who gets to choose just 10 photos from the hundred’s of wonderful photos posted to our Flickr group this week.  You are all an inspiration so please keep submitting your photos and recommending us to your friends.

It’s also been a big week for our lovely leader Jodi with the launch of the new MCP Fusion action set, it’s been a long wait but this action set is so worth it!  For a little taster try the free MCP Mini Fusion set.  If you are not yet a member of the MCP P52 now is a great time to join as there will be a giveaway of the new MCP Fusion action set to one lucky MCP Project 52 participant.  Watch the Flickr group discussion board and this blog for more details in the coming weeks.

Onto the top ten photos for this week.

Express Yourself by trebecca84

Express yourself – Karla Collegeman by karla_vaco

Scream by ginaevans2807

Dun na na na na na na na Chapmannnnn! by Utterly Picturesque

Project 52 Week 9 by Joyful Reflections

Shooter by Moopiecow

9/52 {Express Yourself….Some More!} by DoubleLPhoto

Express Yourself!!! by My Photographic Eye by Irela

MCP Project 52/9: Express Yourself by VioletRayPhotography

MCP Project 52 9/52 Express Yourself… by mycirclephotos

If you’ve been featured this week one of the moderators will be adding the I’ve Been Featured badge into the comments for your Flickr photo.  Feel free to take this badge and use it on your blog, Facebook etc.  And everyone who joins the MCP Project 52 is entitled to use the ‘I’m a Participant’ badge, grab the code and use as you’d like.

Direct Link: http://www.mcpactions.com/images/FinalParticipantBanner.png

Code – <center><a href="http://www.tinyurl.com/mcp-project52/"><img src="http://tinyurl.com/4881x12"/></a></center>

Now then onto the theme for week 10 are you ready it’s ………. “Childhood Toys”

We hope you have fun with the theme but remember you don’t need to use the theme if it doesn’t work for you; it’s purely there for inspiration.  We do ask that you submit just your 1 favourite photo into the Flickr group each week and make sure it was taken during the week 10 dates of 5th to 11th March 2011.

The week 10 theme inspired a trip to my parent’s attic to see which childhood toys of mine still lived there.  I found my beloved Lego and took this photo of one of my original Lego figures with one of my son’s.  Apparently my Lego figure was only made between 1974 and 1976; it’s worn better over the last 35+ years than I have!

The week’s featured photos were compiled by Rebecca Spencer.  She’s from England and is the passionate hobbyist of our group.  You can see more of Rebecca’s photos on her blog. Loves: Shooting photos of her wiggly pre-schooler Theo, Nikon, British humour and long, lazy summer days.

The FREE MCP Mini Fusion Photoshop action is now available

For Photoshop CS2- CS5 and Elements, PSE 5-9

The Mini Fusion Photoshop action gives you a small taste of what the upcoming MCP Fusion set offers. With just one click, you can inject new life into your photos and enjoy stunning color conversions. Optional tints and exposure fix layers let you customize your images to get the look you want. Download this action in one of two ways: from the MCP Facebook Page (“Exclusive” button under the profile image) or from our website.

MCP Fusion releases March 1, 2011. Don’t miss it!!!

If you want to win MCP Fusion Photoshop actions before you can buy them, help MCP Actions spread the word about this brand new FREE Photoshop action, Mini Fusion.

Download Mini Fusion below!

Facebook NOW allows High Res Downloads: Protect Yourself!

Facebook is a goldmine of social networking for photographers. When used efficiently, Facebook can have an enormous impact on the growth and success of your photography business.  Facebook is a great resource for marketing, learning, and inspiration. It allows photographers from all over the world to connect and share.

For all its upsides, one downside is lack of control. When you publish information on your own website or blog, your control the content and appearance.  When you use a social networking platform, such as Facebook, you are powerless as they make changes to the interface, functionality, or terms of use.  For example, Facebook had a “Suggest to Friends” area. People designed profile images that depended on it, with bold arrows saying “If you like our page, please suggest it to your friends.” And then, one day, “poof.” It disappeared.

Facebook constantly changes the dimensions for apps, and when they went from 760px wide to 720 pixel wide last year, it literally messed up the appearance of custom Facebook Pages. While I assume they consult with advisers before making big changes, I am clearly not one of them.  Facebook causes frustration to the masses as they implement new changes. It seems they try to fix things that were not broken to begin with.

One of the latest changes, with a HUGE impact on photographers, is the ability to download high-resolution images. For non-photographers, this is a great feature. After a party, users can share their high-res point and shoot images with relatives and friends.  Great tool, right?  For a professional photographer, this is a disaster.  When you upload your images for a sneak peek, you want customers sharing them online with friends.  Typically, you do not want them to download and print from this version. There is a way to stop it!

People can only download what is uploaded. If you upload re-sized images, and your customer excitedly selects “download in high-resolution,” they still only have the file you placed on Facebook.  A 600×900 pixel wide image at 72ppi, it is low-resolution. Facebook does not have the ability to make that a true high-res image. Also, when sharing images online, add a watermark to further protect them.

While this does mean more work for photographers, MCP Actions has an easy solution. Just visit us on Facebook and go to the “Free Actions” tab. We have a series of Free Photoshop actions for photographers who use Photoshop or Elements (PSE). This set includes resizing, sharpening, and watermarking tools.  Plus it has a side-by-side diptic layout and a top and bottom layout, perfect for sharing two images, or showing off your before and after images edited with MCP’s other Photoshop actions. I would appreciate you sharing this blog post with all of your photographer friends on Facebook and on photo forums, so that they protect themselves from the “high-res” situation.

*** I may just be psychic….  Hours after writing the above article, Facebook rolled out a new layout.  Tabs are no longer located at the top of the screen – they are under the profile picture.  The profile is smaller now, instead of 200x600px, it is 180x540px.  The good news is that it remains the same aspect ratio.  You now can comment on pages with your page name, but your feeds and wall are not organized by most recent posts.  Basically what you knew as Facebook has changed…  Literally right after I posted the article above…