Best Free Photoshop Actions for Photographers

Millions of people were introduced to the power of filters on their photos via Instagram giving the average person the power to turn average photos into something magical. But years before that photographers had to rely on either working to achieve those looks SOOC (straight out of the camera) or on making manual adjustments in Photoshop. There was, and still is LOMO cameras that achieve awesome artistic photography effects SOOC, but if you're using a standard SLR Nikon or Canon you're most likely having to rely on computer software to adjust the feel of your photos.

Believe it or not macros, otherwise known as Actions were introduced in 1996 in Photoshop 4.0. That makes Actions almost 20 years old now, far preceding Instagram. 1997 was when I first started learning Photoshop and honestly I don't remember ever using Actions at that time. Honestly, because I was focusing on graphic design I never paid that much attention to them. Only until I started messing around with photography did I start to learn the power of Actions.

Over the years I've paid for a lot of different Actions to achieve certain effects and I haven't been more impressed than by the ones below that are absolutely free. These are all by a user on deviantart by the name of Megan van der Elst and are all awesome. You can download them either by clicking on any image or scrolling to the bottom and downloading the bundle of 69 free actions below.

The download link is at the top right of each page… once you download the zip file you need to extract the file using winzip or winrar, then double clicking on the .ATN file will install the actions into Photoshop. If that doesn't work you can search “install actions photoshop” on youtube.