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5 Genuinely Useful Photoshop Actions

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A Post By: Glenn Harper

I use Lightroom for basic editing and raw conversions, but I still like to tweak my
photos in Photoshop. Mostly, that’s just about familiarity. I’m a Photoshop addict.
Technically, it makes sense to do as much editing in the raw convertor as possible—
perhaps all of it—but I like the blank canvas that is Photoshop more than the frog-
LANDSCAPE PORTRAIT
marched work ow of raw convertors. Besides, there are still things you can see and
PHOTOGRAPHY PHOTOGRAPHY
do in Photoshop that aren’t possible in Lightroom. TIPS TIPS

Although I might spend a fair while in Photoshop doing labor-intensive things, for the
most part, I’m looking to edit photos quickly and naturally so they might be broadly
acceptable for publication. I want my pictures to look good without going down the
path of fancy e ects, which would often narrow their salability. PHOTO BEGINNER
COMPOSITION PHOTOGRAPHY
TIPS TIPS

PHOTO POST GET STARTED WITH

PROCESSING TIPS CAMERAS AND
GEAR

One way I can quickly tweak photos in Photoshop CC is to have a collection of Actions
available. This article will show you ve useful Photoshop Actions (available for
download at the end of the article) curated and/or adapted by me that have nothing
to do with 1970s summery lm e ects, light leak e ects, or anything like that. Those
are for another day.

Make Buttons for your Actions

Before we get down to the Actions, consider putting your Actions window into
“Button Mode” once you’ve recorded or downloaded them. This makes actions more
usable since it avoids you having to scroll down to nd them. Nothing is faster than
single clicks to get your images looking good, even if you have to back up sometimes.

You can customize the colors of your Action buttons if you want, perhaps assigning a
di erent color to each type of edit.

Observe and Adapt

One of the purposes of this article is to show you some neat tricks in Photoshop that
you can incorporate into Actions. You’ll be able to see what’s happening and use the
same tools to achieve di erent or better things. These Actions also make use of
channel masks, which enable precise, awlessly nuanced selections of color and tone
for di erent types of edits.

These Actions make heavy use of channels, selections, and layer masks.

Action #1 Saturation Boost

Ever since “vibrancy” was introduced, the use of saturation masks has diminished.
The purpose of a saturation mask is to gradually mask the most or least saturated
areas of an image, depending on whether you invert the selection or not. We can still
use such a mask to create a saturation boost Action. It is made using Photoshop’s
HSB/HSL lter.

The HSB/HSL lter has a psychedelic e ect on the image.

An inverse saturation mask addresses the least saturated areas of the image more
strongly, but there’s still an outside chance of clipping the RGB channels with it (i.e.
overexposing or underexposing them and losing detail). In this Action, a “blend if”
blending option has been added to give extra protection to shadows and highlights.

Method

1. Create a duplicate layer (Cmd/Ctrl + J).

2. Apply an HSB/HSL lter (RGB & HSB settings) to the duplicate layer – it will turn a weird
color.

3. Invert the colors of the layer (Ctrl/Cmd + I).

4. Select the green channel under “channels”, right-click and create a duplicate channel
(label it “Sat Mask”).

5. Go back to layers and delete the duplicate layer.

6. Back in channels, Ctrl/Cmd + click on the “Sat Mask” channel you just created (you should
see marching ants on your open photo at this point).

7. In layers, create a hue/saturation adjustment layer.

8. Add +25 of saturation in the hue/saturation dialogue box (or any value that might be
useful).

9. Go to Layer > Layer Style > Blending Options.

10. Under Blend If > This Layer, move the sliders inwards to 245 and 10 (or in that vicinity).

11. Hold down the Alt key to split these sliders into two, moving the inner halves to values of
70 and 160. This feathers the selection to avoid harsh transitions in tone. Click “OK”.

12. Delete the “Sat Mask” channel.

13. Ctrl/Cmd + E to merge all layers.

50-50 view of HSB/HSL lter and regular photo.

If the e ect of the Action is too strong or weak for your liking, you can hit Ctrl/Cmd +
Z to unblend the layers and alter the saturation value. Then simply blend again. This
action is much the same as using the vibrancy slider only in fast button form.

Action #2 Mid-Tone Contrast +50

This relatively simple action injects contrast into the mid-tone to highlight areas of an
image and leaves shadow areas untouched. Adding contrast in this way also
intensi es the color. It’s akin to a curves adjustment, leaving the lower part of the
curve untouched.

Although it’s hard to appreciate in a side-by-side comparison, perhaps you can

see the snappier highlights and slightly increased mid-tone saturation to the
left side of this image. Shadows remain untouched.

Method

1. Go to the channels palette and click on the RGB channel while holding down the Ctrl/Cmd
key. This creates a selection on your background layer.

2. Switch to your layers palette and hit Ctrl/Cmd + J keys, which will paste your masked
selection onto a new layer.

3. Go to blending modes (top left of the layers palette), and select Soft Light. Contrast is
added to the mid-tone/highlight portions of your picture.

4. Adjust the layer opacity to taste (set at 50% in the supplied Action).

5. Ctrl/Cmd + E to merge down the layers.

Action #3 Re ned Clarity

This Photoshop Action is similar to the previous one in that it’s a type of contrast
adjustment which protects the shadows. The main di erence is that this one uses
Clarity, which it borrows from ACR.

In terms of appearance, this Action reveals more textural detail than a straight
contrast adjustment by emphasizing edges and small changes in tone. It a ects the
saturation less.

The image on the left has some Clarity applied to it, but the shadows are
protected to avoid the kind of crunchy look that occurs with a similar amount
is applied in a raw converter (right).

(The Clarity slider gives much the same e ect as “high radius, low amount” Unsharp
Mask sharpening, which was a thing about 10 years ago.)

If you want to give at images extra pop with a greater impression of depth and
detail, this Photoshop Action works well. Once again, it uses a Blend If modi cations
to re ne the result, avoiding the grunge that often makes excessive Clarity unsightly.
By tapering the result from shadows to highlights, it does most of its work in the mid
to high tones.

Method

1. Create a duplicate layer (Ctrl/Cmd + J).

2. Label the layer “Clarity”.

3. Open ACR by clicking on Filter > Camera Raw Filter.

4. Drag the Clarity slider to 100% (ignore the harsh result).

5. Click OK and be returned to Photoshop.

6. Open the blending options (Layer Style > Blending Options or double-click to the right of
the layer name).

7. Go to Blend If > Underlying Layer. Hold down the Alt key and drag the right-hand side of
the shadow triangle on the left all the way to the far right.

8. Click OK.

9. Adjust the layer opacity to taste (the supplied Action is set to 60%).

10. Ctrl/Cmd + E to merge layers.

Action #4 Shadow Noise

In recent years, the Auto button in Lightroom and ACR has improved to such an
extent that I sometimes click on it as an alternative starting point. The result is akin to
a mild HDR e ect. In particular, it tends to cut out the high contrast in images.

Photos that are intended for sale (however optimistically) don’t generally bene t
from being loaded with hard-to-see, blocky detail.

In an image such as this one, I might hit Auto in the raw converter to unblock
some of the shadows (as is the case in the top section of the picture: notice
the railings, man’s coat, and architectural details).

Of course, the problem with bringing out shadow detail is that it invites noise.
Depending on your camera and its settings, it might invite a lot of noise. If we create
a Noise Reduction Action using a channel mask, we can target the darkest areas of an
image. What’s more, the mask is perfectly feathered, so it will seamlessly apply more
or less noise reduction according to the tones of the image.

On the right side of this image, you’ll note that the brighter areas are masked
o (redder areas) and thus excluded from noise reduction.

The downside of creating a Photoshop Action for noise reduction is that normally
you’d adjust the settings according to the properties of each photo. However, there’s
nothing to stop you creating several noise reduction actions for di erent picture
pro les. As well, you could integrate a noise reduction plugin that assesses each
picture individually.

Method

1. Create a duplicate layer and name it “Reduce Noise”.

2. Apply noise reduction to the duplicate layer.

3. Go to channels and Ctrl/Cmd + Click on the RGB channel, creating a selection.

4. Hit Shift + Ctrl/Cmd + I to invert the selection.

5. Click on “Save Selection as a Channel”.

6. With the selection visible (marching ants) go back to layers and add a mask to your
duplicate “Reduce Noise” layer.

7. Delete the remaining extra channel (“Alpha 1” if you didn’t rename it).

8. Ctrl/Cmd + E to merge the layers.

Action #5 Web Sharpen

Sharpening is a contrast adjustment, where adjacent edges are made brighter and
darker according to their tone to create the illusion of sharpness. The aim is to
emphasize these edges without overdoing it and creating haloes.

One way you can control sharpening is with a luminosity mask, which automatically
modi es the amount of edge contrast applied depending on how bright or dark it is.
The beauty of this is that it’s subjective. Like other channel masks, it fades the e ect
of your edit based purely on the content of the image. The only control you have to
think about is opacity, which might be greater or smaller depending on the size of the
image.

By applying a luminosity mask, sharpening is proportionately reduced in the

darker parts of the image (shown as deep red). This ensures that less
attention is given to any noisy shadow areas, which we don’t want to sharpen.
The Action also shields bright highlights from sharpening using a Blend If
setting.

I nd that this Action at 10% opacity works well on web images of between 800 and
1200 pixels wide.

Method

1. Create a duplicate layer and name it “Sharpen”.

2. Open channels, hold down the  Ctrl/Cmd key and click on the RGB channel, creating a
selection.

3. Click on the “Save selection as channel” icon at the bottom of the channels palette. A new
channel will appear called “Alpha 1”.

4. Deselect it by hitting Ctrl/Cmd + D or by clicking Select > Deselect.

5. Click on your “Sharpen” layer to make it live.

6. Go to Filter > Unsharp Mask and select a high value of 400-500, a radius of around 0.8 to
1.2, and a value of 0.

7. Ctrl/Cmd + click on the “Alpha 1” channel in the channels palette (the selection will
reappear as marching ants).

8. Go back to the layers palette and with your “Sharpen” layer selected, click on the “Add
layer mask” icon. This modi es the sharpening e ect.

9. Click on Layer> Layer Style > Blending Options.

10. Move the right-hand slider under “This Layer” to 245.

11. Holding down the Alt key, split the left-hand side of this slider and move it to around 220.

12. Click OK.

13. Adjust the layer opacity to taste (the download action is set at 10%).

14. Delete Alpha 1 channel.

15. Ctrl/Cmd + E to merge layers.

Photoshop Action Crashes

Occasionally, for reasons unclear to me, Photoshop Actions seem to crash and will
not thereafter work without a Photoshop restart. A sure sign that this has happened,
aside from inaction and error messages, is that the button in “button mode” changes
color.

Download the Set

Download these actions here for free. To install: open the download directly into
Photoshop or load from within Actions.

Finally
If an Action doesn’t improve the photo as you’d hoped, you can delete or add
elements as you wish, perhaps with di erent settings or to re ne the result. I hope
this article inspires you to experiment with some of Photoshop’s more powerful
tools. Good luck!

Read more from our Post Production category

Glenn Harper is a writer, photographer, and all-around good guy. For almost
20 years, his photos have been licensed and syndicated through European
photo libraries, resulting in publication all over the world. In the early 2000s
he dabbled in writing for UK photo magazines, but then lost track of time.
He’s okay with a camera, knows a fair bit about stu and is here to help.
Check out Glenn’s website here.

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