How to Saving Actions in Photoshop

After you’ve created a perfect set of efficient, time-saving actions, you should definitely save it. Doing so allows you to clear the Actions palette and reload the set at any time. It also allows you to share your custom-built actions with other designers on a production team. Note that Photoshop allows you to save only sets of actions—not individual actions. Before saving, you must create a new set by clicking the Create ANew Set button at the bottom of the Actions palette, or by choosing New Set from the Actions palette flyout menu. Give the set a descriptive name, and then drag the actions that you’d like to save into it. With the new set selected in the palette, choose Save Actions from the Actions palette flyout menu. When the Save dialog box appears, click the Save button. Note that on the Macintosh platform (unlike Windows), Photoshop defaults to the Application Support --> Adobe --> Adobe Photoshop CS3 --> Presets --> Actions folder, not the Presets folder located in the application folder where the rest of the built-in actions are stored. To keep things more organized, I would recommend saving all your actions in the same folder as the built-in actions (Applications --> Adobe Photoshop CS3 --> Presets --> Actions).

After you’ve saved your actions, you can reset, restore, or clear the actions in the Actions palette at any time, without having to worry about potentially losing all the actions that you spent valuable time creating. You can always restore a custom action set by  choosing Load Actions from the Actions palette flyout menu. In the Load dialog box that appears, select the set from the Actions folder and click Load. The set automatically reappears in the Actions palette. To share your custom set of actions with other designers on a production team, locate the ATN file on your system, and then make it available to your coworkers via email, a shared network folder, CD, or FTP download.