How to Install Photoshop Actions

Shown: Duotone Colors Photoshop Actions. Drag the slider to compare.

Load an Action in About a Minute

A Photoshop action is a recording. Someone clicked through a technique once, Photoshop wrote down every step, and now that whole sequence plays back on any photo with one click. The PHLEARN actions build the same layer stacks we teach, such as frequency separation, dodge and burn, sharpening, or a vignette, so you get a proper, editable setup without doing the twenty clicks yourself.

Installing one takes about a minute, in Photoshop on Mac and Windows, in every Creative Cloud version. Here is the whole job in three steps.

Prefer a printable guide? Download the PHLEARN Photoshop Actions install guide (PDF). It is also its own download on every pack page.

What’s Inside an Action Pack

An .ATN is not an image, so you cannot open it or drag it onto a canvas. It only means something to Photoshop’s Actions panel. Keep the unzipped folder somewhere permanent, such as Documents, so you can load the set again after a Photoshop update.

Shown: Light Rays Photoshop Action. Drag the slider to compare.

The Fastest Way to Install Photoshop Actions

This works in every version of Photoshop from CS6 onward, on Mac and Windows, and takes about as long as it takes to read.

Installing From the Actions Panel

The double-click method is faster, but the Actions panel gives you a proper file dialog. Use it when you are loading several packs at once, when a double-click opened the wrong program, or when you just want to see exactly which file you are picking.

Two neighbors in that menu are worth knowing. Replace Actions clears everything in the panel and loads only the file you pick, which is handy when the panel gets cluttered and a disaster when you did not mean it. Reset Actions puts Photoshop’s default set back. Neither deletes your .ATN files, so anything you lose can be loaded again.

Shown: Sun Flare Photoshop Actions. Drag the slider to compare.

Make Your Actions Permanent

Once an action is loaded, it stays in the Actions panel every time you open Photoshop. The only things that clear it are resetting your preferences, a crash before Photoshop saves its settings, or Replace Actions. Copy the .ATN into Photoshop’s own Actions folder and the set also waits in the Actions panel menu, next to Photoshop’s built-in sets, after any reset.

Keep the .ATN, or save your own

Your original download is the backup. If you have edited an action or built a set of your own, select the set (the folder, not an action inside it) and choose Save Actions from the panel menu to write it out as a new .ATN file. Photoshop only saves whole sets, so if the option is grayed out, click the set instead of a single action.

Moving your actions to a new version of Photoshop

When Photoshop updates to a new yearly version, it usually offers to migrate your presets on first launch, and Edit > Presets > Migrate Presets does the same job later. If anything is missing afterward, load the .ATN again with either method above. It takes ten seconds, which is the whole argument for keeping the original download.

Playing an Action

Installing is the easy part. Here is how to run an action so it does what the pack’s tutorial shows.

Already edited the photo? Merge everything to a new layer first (Cmd+Option+Shift+E on a Mac, Ctrl+Alt+Shift+E on Windows), select that layer, then press Play. Most PHLEARN actions expect to start from a single image layer.

Shown: Smart Sharpen Photoshop Actions. Drag the slider to compare.

3 Tips for Using Actions Well

Photoshop on the iPad and on the web cannot run actions. They have no Actions panel, so use the desktop app.

Shown: Black & White Photoshop Actions. Drag the slider to compare.

More Ways to Run an Action

Turn actions into one-click buttons

Choose Button Mode from the Actions panel menu and every action becomes a colored button. One click plays it. Choose Button Mode again to go back to the list view, which you need for loading new sets or looking inside an action.

Give an action a keyboard shortcut

Double-click the empty space to the right of an action’s name (or select it and choose Action Options from the panel menu), then pick a Function Key. Add Shift or Command (Mac) or Control (Windows) if that key is already taken. From then on, pressing that key plays the action, no panel required.

Run one action on a whole folder of photos

Go to File > Automate > Batch, choose the set and the action, point Source at a folder, and point Destination at a different folder so your originals stay untouched. Photoshop opens every image, plays the action, and saves the result. If you do this often, File > Automate > Create Droplet turns the same setup into a small app you can drop files onto.

Shown: Smart Vignette Photoshop Action. Drag the slider to compare.

What Trips People Up

I double-clicked the file and nothing happened

Open Window > Actions and scroll all the way to the bottom. The panel does not scroll to a new set for you. If it shows colored buttons instead of a list, you are in Button Mode; the new actions are at the bottom there too.

Photoshop says the command is not currently available

Besides the usual causes in Playing an Action (a 16-bit or CMYK photo, or the wrong layer selected), check for a locked layer, a Smart Object or text layer where the action needs pixels, or an older Photoshop that lacks the tool. Click Stop, fix the cause, and play the action again from the top.

I clicked Stop by accident

Select the action again and press Play to start over from the top. A message with Continue and Stop is part of the action, so Continue is almost always the button you want.

Photoshop is not in English and the action errors on a layer name

Actions refer to layers by name, and the default layer in a French or German Photoshop is not called “Background”. Rename your layer to match what the action asks for, or set Photoshop’s language to English in Preferences > Interface, run the action, then switch back.

Photoshop could not load the actions

Either the .ATN is still inside the .zip, or the download did not finish. Unzip it, check that the file size looks reasonable (a few kilobytes at least), and download it again if it does not.

My actions vanished after an update or a reset

Resetting preferences, or Replace Actions, clears the panel. Load the .ATN again with either method above. If you copied the pack into the Presets > Actions folder, it is also waiting in the Actions panel menu.

The result looks different from the tutorial

The photo decides the outcome. A full-resolution file and a small web export respond very differently to the same blur radius or sharpening amount, so run actions on the full-size image. If the effect is too strong, lower the opacity of the layer or group the action created.

Does it work in Photoshop Elements or an older Photoshop?

Elements 11 and newer has an Actions panel in Expert mode (Window > Actions) and reads the same .ATN files, but it is missing some tools, so the retouching setups may stop partway through. We build and test our actions in Photoshop. Older Photoshop versions, back to CS6, load actions the same way; a very old version may lack a filter a newer action calls.

Learn What the Actions Are Doing

Every PHLEARN action automates a technique we teach in full. If you want to understand the layers an action builds, or do the same thing by hand, start with the free tutorials in Retouching and Color Grading, then browse the full PHLEARN Photoshop actions library.